How To Deal With Unrequited Love?

While an “ordinary love” reassures us that we’re loved and appreciated, unrequited love hurts us and increases our feelings and cravings for the person we love.

It makes us feel like we’re losing control of ourselves and that we’re giving our hearts to a person who doesn’t appreciate us as much as we appreciate him or her.

If you’re dealing with unrequited love, you have to understand that your need for intimacy and affection has built up so much that you’ve become dependent on your crush for validation.

You want that person to reciprocate your efforts and ease your one-sided feelings because otherwise, you’ll keep feeling uneasy, unworthy, lonely, and unfulfilled.

Since you’re unhappy, keep in mind that it’s normal for you to think that you need this person in your life. You want this person to take your worries away and make you feel complete.

But what you actually need is to take a few steps back and realize that you can deal with unrequited love in more than one way.

1. You can confess your feelings to your crush (learn if you’re on the same page).
2. You can keep bonding with this person and see if he or she develops feelings for you later down the line. If you do this, bear in mind that that you’ll prolong your cravings and possibly risk getting rejected.
3. Or if the person said or hinted that he or she doesn’t like you, you can distance yourself from your crush, detach, and get yourself back.

You have three different options in front of you. I suggest you weigh their pros and cons and then decide what’s best for you.

Just don’t take too long to decide because you don’t want to wait weeks or months before you make a decision that will kick start a new chapter of your life.

This time, we’ll talk about how to deal with unrequited love.

What makes dealing with unrequited love so difficult?

The reason why it’s so difficult to deal with unrequited love is that unrequited love is based on desires, cravings, and expectations and not on actual love. Actual love is both rational and emotional and takes months to develop, whereas unrequited love is mainly emotional and occurs with very little or no intimate understanding of your crush.

The drive behind unrequited love is a strong emotional need for reciprocation (which is reassurance) while in real love, the force that keeps couples together is their relationship mentality, self-awareness, maturity, selflessness, and personal strength.

There are many differences between unrequited love and real love, but the thing that stands out the most is that one is healthy and the other is not.

It goes without saying that unrequited love is the unhealthy one as it mostly consists of anxiety and cravings that can be very emotionally challenging for a person to overcome.

It can make a person feel unworthy of love and recognition and ruin his or he self-esteem.

That’s why you don’t want your unrequited love to stay unrequited for a very long time. You want it to either get reciprocated or to get rejected so that you can let go of your unpleasant feelings and move on.

I know that rejection can be difficult to deal with, but in my opinion, it’s better to take the risk and find out how your crush feels about you than to keep suppressing your feelings for months or years.

If you don’t tell your crush how you feel, you could see your crush dating someone new. And that could hurt you more than you can ever imagine.

So deal with unrequited love swiftly and effectively while you still can.

Signs of unrequited love

If you’re a victim of unrequited love, you probably feel rejected, weak, vulnerable, unconfident, and in a lot of pain. You feel that you’re not receiving what you deserve even though you’re giving it your best.

Know that it’s completely normal to feel this way as unrequited love drains victims of energy and hope. It tells them that they’re not good enough and makes them look for flaws within themselves.

The truth though is that it’s not always their fault. Sometimes people just aren’t emotionally ready for a relationship because they’re going through difficult times on their own.

The most common reasons why people aren’t ready to date are:

• breakups and divorces
• financial difficulties
• health problems
• losing loved ones
• stress from work or school
• worries about the past
• traumas and fears

So if your love isn’t being reciprocated and you don’t know why, don’t blame yourself. Oftentimes, people just don’t want to date others because they’re stressed and need some time to focus on themselves for a while.

You can tell a person is stressed or doesn’t want you get close to you if he or she:

• Doesn’t value your enthusiasm, initiative, and eagerness to connect
• Doesn’t give back as much as you give
• Makes excuses not to see you or spend time with you
• Doesn’t reciprocate your love and interest
• Knows that you’re into him/her but doesn’t do anything about it
• Doesn’t seem interested in the things that make you happy
• Makes plans with others instead of you

Unrequited love can last for years

If you don’t do something about your unrequited love, your one-sided feelings can last for months or years. How long they last really depends on your perceptions of yourself (self-esteem), the things going on in your life, and the way your crush treats you.

It can almost be compared to falling in love with the wrong person as both can create a variety of good and bad emotions and keep giving you hope that things will soon return to normal.

Unfortunately, though, unrequited love doesn’t always return to normal. There is no normal because normal never existed. All that existed was a one-sided fantasy of what a relationship with a person you love could be like rather than what it actually is.

So think of unrequited love as a relationship that is full of ups and downs. When the relationship feels promising, it makes you feel good and when it’s not, it kills your hope and wounds you.

My advice is to not be afraid to let go of something that isn’t meant for you. I don’t think you should give up early on relationships because relationships require lots and lots of hard work.

But do give up on people who continuously hurt you and never give you enough of what you need to feel comfortable and secure.

How to deal with unrequited love?

Everyone knows that we fall in love with someone we like because we find his or her good traits attractive. But what people don’t know is that we want that person to give us what we respect the most, or conversely, what we lack the most.

If it’s strength and independence we respect (or lack), we usually find strong, confident, self-sufficient people attractive. We subconsciously consider them reliable and as a result, want that reliability for ourselves.

If we appreciate beauty and self-care or if we find ourselves below average-looking, we tend to cling to people who are good-looking. I’m not saying all average or below average-looking people actively look for good-looking people, but lots of them gravitate toward those who give them attention because they subconsciously wish to have them by their side. They want to know that they have what it takes to attract attractive people.

Furthermore, if it’s love and recognition that we want or lack, we often feel pulled toward the people who aren’t giving it to us. Such people’s recognition means the world to us because we can’t have it. It’s unobtainable.

The saying “The opposites attract” is, therefore often very true. We appreciate a trait or skill that we don’t have or are bad at much more than something that’s been a part of our lives for decades.

This is why you need to realize that you feel attracted to your crush because he or she isn’t giving you what you want. He or she is keeping it from you and making it difficult for you to love yourself.

Once you comprehend this, you can then start to work on minimizing your anxiety and dealing with unrequited love properly.

To help you figure this out quicker, here are some possible reasons why you’re having a difficult time dealing with unrequited love.

• poor confidence and self-esteem
• very few dating options
• a strong desire to possess and bond
• thinking you’re in a race against time to find a partner and/or to start a family
• thinking you must keep fighting for love or you’ll lose this person forever (refusing to get some space from this person)
• keeping your expectations high

If you want to deal with unrequited love fast, you have to treat it the same way as a breakup. It’s essentially a romantic rejection, which is why you must protect yourself from it and find out if there’s anything your crush has that you don’t have.

Obviously, no two people are the same, and comparing yourself to other people is usually a bad idea, but there has to be something significant that you can work on and improve.

If this person is your first crush or your first dating opportunity after a long time, it’s probably not so much about what this person has but about what you don’t have.

It’s about your lack of experience and faith that you’ll be okay with or without this person in your life. You might want to work on the way you see yourself so that you don’t take people’s rejections too personally and suffer too much because of them.

The following image contains points on how to deal with unrequited love.

Earlier, I’ve mentioned that there are 3 different ways you can handle unrequited love. But when a person directly or indirectly rejects you, there’s only one way you should handle it.

You should pull back and get some space because a person who isn’t willing to give you what you want is of no use to you. He or she is actually your worst nightmare.

It may seem childish to part ways with someone you love just because of a rejection, I know, but pulling back and focusing on yourself will help you detach and prevent you from obsessing about the person who has captured your heart.

Always do what helps you heal

If unrequited love hurts you, you obviously shouldn’t try to stay friends with the person you love. You can be friends after you’ve lost your feelings, but don’t torture yourself right after the rejection because you won’t be doing yourself any favors.

You’ll just make the healing much more difficult for yourself.

If you want to do the right thing, put yourself first and do what benefits your well-being, not makes it worse.

You may think that your crush can help you deal with anxiety, but trust me that your crush isn’t a person who can make you feel better (unless he or she wants to be with you).

All your crush can do is remind you that you’re physically close to getting what you need, but that you can’t have it no matter what you do.

So don’t worry about what your crush will think and do if you pull back. Don’t fear that you’ll kill your chances with him or her either.

The only time you should consider staying in close proximity to a person who rejected you is when you’re okay with the rejection and can handle seeing your crush dating someone new.

Did you learn how to deal with unrequited love? How did you deal with yours? Post your thoughts and ideas below.

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Angelie

I’m Angelie, a writer and a designer at Magnet of Success. Whether I’m writing compelling content or designing engaging pictures, I create content that resonates with our visitors and aids them on their self-improvement journey. I enjoy writing about relationship dynamics and the difficulties couples may face.