The Way Through Unrequited Love
What we want exists beyond the pain-inducing character.
The objective of this article is to provide four practical steps to help individuals come through the deeply lonely and humbling woods of unrequited love.
Simply put, unrequited love is when you fall for someone who doesn’t love you back.
VeryWellMind has a very helpful article on the topic and they describe it like this,
“There are times when we have strong romantic feelings toward someone, only to find out that they do not feel the same way about us … It is a one-sided experience that can leave us feeling pain, grief, and shame.”
Recently I wrote an article defending unspoken, emotional affairs after falling into one myself. I claimed they need to run their course a little to be overcome.
My affair ran along, grew, and then grew too big. I began relying on it and suddenly it was the only thing I looked forward to. Over Christmas, she pulled back, and quickly the fantasy fell apart. The emotional affair transitioned into an unrequited experience.
There’s advice on how to get over it, forget about it, find somebody else, distract yourself, etc. but as Mediums America Zed says on the topic,
The four steps below have got me to a point where I can see the end. I’m not completely out of the woods, but the trees are thinning, the clearing is clearer and I’m not stepping in as much s*** as I was before.
Crucially, my perspective of the person has changed. I don’t like her any less; I just don’t see her as an answer anymore, I see her as a catalyst.
My 4 Steps are these: Accept Reality, Embrace Humility, Pinpoint the Pain, and Examine the Character.
Step #1: Accept Reality — We Must Get To Know Them Better
The School of Life names The Cure for Unrequited Love as being the simple method of getting to know the person better. In the video, they say, “We must think more intensely and constructively about who they might really be.”
“By stopping us from growing close to them, the beloved also prevents us from tiring of them in the cathartic and liberating manner that is the gift of requited love.
It isn’t their charms that are keeping us magnetised, it is our lack of knowledge of their flaws.”
Alain de Botton — The Cure for Unrequited Love
When I fall for someone a large part of my mind becomes a daydreaming fantasy land with this person, and my idea of the person quickly fills in the blank spaces in my knowledge of them, creating a false-idol image of them in my head.
This first step is the much-needed reality check for people like me. We know through our lived experience that everyone has flaws and everyone can be irritating. The School of Life points this out:
“Close up, we are all deeply challenging and trying propositions… The more we discovered of them (our unrequited lover), the less they would ever look like the solution to all our problems.”
They go on to say that the real cruelty of unrequited love, isn’t that we haven’t been loved back by the person, rather it’s that we lack the knowledge of them that would set us free.
How to Take This Step
Find out more about them, if you can. Look closely at how their personality might annoy you. Observe their behaviors and join the dots to traits you find irritating. If you look hard enough you will find some.
As the School of Life recommends:
“We must, in absence of a direct cure, undertake an imaginative one. We must accept, without quite knowing the details that they would of course prove decisively irritating. We know this because they are human, and we know this dark but deeply cheering fact about everyone who has ever lived.”
This exercise removes their false-idol image and helpfully grounds our sense of reality, but it doesn’t ground our affection for the person.
The next step is about what we do with this warm, glowing affection that we’re dying to somehow share with them.
Step #2: Embrace Humility — Burn Your Ego
The inspiration for this step came from Russel Brand’s video on the subject, When They Don’t Love You Back.
He claims that what is required is allowing these feelings to guide us to humility, the awareness of our relative insignificance, and the understanding that at this time, we don’t know what’s right for us.
To illustrate this step I’ll take you down the two possible paths. The first is what I have been doing up until now, and that’s either consciously or unconsciously denying humility. The second is what is required to make progress, embracing humility.
Path 1: Denying Humility
Our egos believe they know how reality should be and will push us to try and bend reality to that vision.
Brand says, “But for us to become immersed in this sort of egoic wilfulness of ‘I must have this, that shouldn’t have happened,’ this is a journey to pain and self-damage.”
If we don’t resist and challenge our ego we will carry these exact feelings into our next relationship or non-relationship, and the next one, repeating negative patterns no matter who the person is.
If we don’t take this step and continue to deny humility, we will not uncover revelations that can bring us out of these woods, and we could be stuck in them our whole lives.
He goes on to say, “There is a great discovery beneath this pain. Do not impede this revelation by continuing to return to your old illusion.”
Path 2: Embracing Humility
Understanding our relative insignificance through this type of pain is one of life’s most humbling lessons.
As Brand says, “let’s face it they’re pretty powerful feelings that bring you low; the depression, the despair, the loss, but these feelings are all guiding us towards humility.”
Just because we’re in love with someone, why should we barge into their lives with our unwanted desires? What right do we have to hold this affection over them? It doesn’t serve either of us.
Instead, find peace and relief in this:
“We have to let go, not only of the person, but of our self-centred belief that we know what is right”
- Russell Brand.
Our ego tells us this person is the one, but this person doesn’t think that, so our ego is not in line with reality, so it’s wrong.
If we accept that our ‘old illusion’ of thinking only this person or type of person is right for us is wrong, then we can be open to the ‘great discovery’ that will bring us out of these woods.
And the great discovery, once you’ve embraced humility and put your ego in the rear-view mirror where it belongs, can be found in step 3.
How to Apply this Step
Let these feelings come and go without forcing the unwanted desires on this person who cannot reciprocate them.
There are two phrases to help you; the first is to honestly face up to where you are now, ‘I feel really bad now, there’s nothing I can do about it and that’s okay.’
The second is to honestly face up to the future, ‘In time I will feel better again and come through this as long as I don’t return to my old illusion.’
“All pain is an invitation to burn ego”
— Russell Brand
Step #3: Pinpoint the Pain — Understand your Source of Suffering
This step makes us aware of our source of suffering by observing our resistance to the situation. Once we locate the source we can understand exactly what it is that we desire and lack in our love lives. Through understanding the challenging emotion, we stop it from growing bigger.
I developed this step from a Headspace meditation on their ‘Handling Sadness’ course. This was the quote that popped up at the end of the session:
“By observing our resistance to challenging emotions, we both understand the source of our suffering & prevent the emotion from escalating”
- Andy Puddicombe, Headspace.
When I first read this quote I didn’t quite understand it. Then I broke it down and it became clearer. I started with the challenging emotion.
My challenging emotion was that I’d fallen head over heels for someone who was unavailable and most likely uninterested. Now I had all these urges that I had to resist from expressing.
Then I observed that resistance. I observed all the things I was resisting to do that were all the things my ego wanted to do, and this is what I wrote down at the time:
I want to talk to her throughout each day, share my favorite music with her, make her laugh, listen to her, walk with her, take her on a drive, openly adore her the way I privately adore her and tell her how much I want to one day wake up with her.
From that, I knew I wanted an emotional, romantic, and physical relationship with her.
Then I removed her from the situation and what was left was my source of suffering; the lack of having a relationship with somebody who I am emotionally, romantically, and physically attracted to.
I must have known this before but by observing and writing it down I clarified everything I desired and everything I lacked, and that was the key to pinpointing my pain.
Your source of suffering may be different from mine but by observing it you can understand it. By understanding it you can stop it from escalating by addressing it.
I haven’t consciously desired a long term relationship in years, but by observing my resistance closely, that’s exactly what I want with this person, so that’s what I want without this person to, and I count that as my great discovery.
The person you’ve fallen helplessly head over heels for, who doesn’t or can’t love you back, is not the one true mate to your soul; they are the catalyst who’s telling your soul it’s ready for a mate.
How to Apply It
Dissect the Headspace quote in the order I have done above. First, identify the challenging emotion, then observe and write down your resistance to it. Then remove your unrequited lover from the situation and what will be left is your source of suffering and potentially, your great discovery.
Step #4: Examine the Character — They Exist Elsewhere
Examining our attraction to this individual helps us see that what we want has to exist in places beyond the pain-inducing character we originally identified it in.
“You must come to terms with the fact that what you’re seeking is not in this other person”
– Russell Brand.
I formed this last and most practical step after watching another video by the School of Life, How to Get Over Someone.
“The way to unfixate is … to get very serious and specific about what the attraction was based on. And then to come to see that the qualities we had admired in the person must necessarily exist in other people who don’t have the set of problems that make the original relationship impossible.”
I knew from step 3 that my attraction was emotional, romantic, and physical. So I had to get specific on what made me attracted in this way.
This is the Character Attraction table I drew up with some rough examples added in:
I actually used my past to help clarify the lesson here. When I look back at my own version of this table, I see that I’ve been just as emotionally, romantically, and physically attracted to other people as I am now to this person, and in similar ways.
This person I’m into now doesn’t have a monopoly on cute, humble, and funny, nor does she have the only voice, laugh, and face that I’ll find attractive. Nothing in that table solely belongs to her.
“The careful examination of the character of one person, paradoxically but very liberatingly, shows that we could in fact, also love someone else.
This is not an exercise in getting us to give up on what we really want. The liberating move is to see that what we want has to exist in places beyond the pain inducing character we originally identified it in.”
For me, this person is a shining example of what I don’t have. She’s gorgeous, generous, kind, funny & gentle, and those are qualities in a person that I’d love to push things forward with. She is just the catalyst though, and by examining my attraction to her I see that what I want must exist elsewhere too.
This final step is the last and most practical one in coming through unrequited love.
How to Apply it
Draw out the table with a column for each area you’re attracted to the person in and fill it out. It’s as simple as that, and you will see that almost nothing in that table will be something you cannot find with somebody else.
There is a purpose to this deeply felt and humbling unrequited love, which is to show you that you’re ready to give the best part of yourself over to a relationship.
Once I took these steps all I needed to do was add a bit of time for them to sink in and work.
Awareness & Understanding + Time have been the antidote to unrequited love for me, my hope is that they can bring you out of these woods too.
