Unrequited Love, or just Emotional Dysfunction?

When the person that you're in love with doesn't love you back, most people will tell you to 'move on'. Get over them. Go fall in love with someone else.

Move on? To where?

Get over them? How?

I don't understand how these things are supposed to work. In fact, I really don't understand what being 'in love' is - because if people who have been in love can fall out of it, and back into it with someone else, then they're obviously not experiencing the same thing that I am.

I am 'in love' with someone - and in a way, I consider myself quite lucky to be here. At least I now know that I am capable of looking at another human being, seeing their strengths and weaknesses and faults and values and saying, "Yes, I love this person." At least I know that I'm not the superficial ***** with impossible standards that I always thought I was - if this person lost every single one of his physically attractive traits, I'd still be able to say, "Yes, I am attracted to this person". He's the only person in the world that I've ever been able to look at, and understand what all those love songs are about. He's the only human being for whom I've ever felt any of the things that other people seem to be able to choose to feel for one person, or choose not to feel for another.

The thing is, he doesn't love me back. Not like that, at least. While he is the center of my universe, I'm just a supporting cast member in his.

I deserve better.

I deserve a man who will love me back.

I should just get over this guy and look for someone else.

All these statements are like communism - they work great on paper, but in practice things aren't nearly that simple.

I have met wonderful people - smart, attractive men who are interested in me. Funny, gentle, loving guys who really want me to give them a chance. Charming, intelligent men who make me feel like a princess.

And I don't want them. I want to want them, but I can't. I don't know how. I can't look at them and say, "Yes, I can love this person despite their faults" or "No, appearances don't matter - I can love the person inside." I wish I could. I really, really wish that I could. I wish that they could be enough. I wish that I could be happy with them.

But I feel like I am broken. I'm not programmed to return people's affections. I've always been this way, and until I met 'The One' I had pretty much grown to accept that I was just broken somehow in this regard - that I'm missing some piece of basic human programming that makes this kind of relationship possible for me. I can fake it well enough, but I'd never really felt it.

Then, I fell in love with one person - and now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to fall back out. I don't know how this is supposed to work, or how this is even supposed to be possible. It doesn't matter how much pain loving him causes me - the idea of not loving him is like the idea of cutting of my hand to get rid of a painful chronic injury. The idea of falling in love with someone else seems foreign and unattainable - it's never happened before him, why should it happen after? I've looked, I've tried, I've worked on myself from the inside out and the outside in to try and rearrange my priorities.

I can't seem to do it.

I feel like a robot, or like the Ice Maiden, or maybe just like an emotionally retarded girl bitching about something that probably doesn't seem so bad to most people. On some level, maybe I'm all of those things.

Most of all, I feel like I'm the only one who has ever felt like this.

Am I really alone in this, or can someone shed a little light on the situation....?

I really feel you on this. I have the same feelings for someone, and it's torture especially because there's a minute chance he might reciprocate someday.

I know I could just sign up for OKCupid and poke around until I get someone who seems okay to go out with me, but it wouldn't be the same. There can be multiple instances of love in a lifetime, but romantic feelings themselves aren't transferable from person to person so I'd have to become comfortable and start having feelings all over again... and nobody's going to wait around for me. I develop attachments so slowly even in friendships that most people just skim past me, which is why finding out that I had romantic feelings for him in the first place just completely blew my mind. I'm sensitive to drama, and the very tactics people use to try to "test" me or make me fall for them makes me close myself off. Sometimes it feels like unrequited love is the only love I'm ever going to be capable of feeling, because I can do it from a distance where it's safe and people give me the steady kindness of a friendship.

Logically I know the point, but emotionally I have to ask what the point is. Nobody's capable of taking his place even if they don't have the faults he constantly criticizes himself for, and they certainly won't have his habits or his idiosyncrasies which are the most important parts. They're just going to be a person. A person I don't want to touch, a person I don't want to open up to, a person I don't want to create for, and a person I don't want to dedicate myself to. Yet other people make do with this every day, even happily. It's pretty clearly a problem in myself.

Listening to people talk about dating is depressing. It's always about when women are expected to put out, how to keep the chase exciting, etc. It all seems like a big game and profit system. Where to, indeed. I'd be eaten alive out there even if I tried to move on, though I know for my own sake I have to move past him.

It's not good for him, either. I can't support him if I'm feeling like this, and if worst comes to worst he doesn't need the burden of someone with ulterior motives when he has so few safe places and safe people already.

it takes time but your love / interest will probably disappear eventually.

I have had some intense crushes in my life. Sometimes it takes a few years but I have always come to my senses in the end. It's never nice to go through it. None of the women liked me back. I now wonder why I liked them so much ?

Last one was 2 years ago. Bloody awful experience !

What choice do you have but to move forward? If he doesn't feel the same then it might be healthier to (gradually) distance yourself from him, at least until you no longer feel such intense attachment. What a shame this guy can't appreciate you.

While I'm not in love with anyone (sadly), I get a lot of what you are talking about, I mean the part where you said that you don't understand how people can fall in and out of love.

I really can't understand that either. It seems so stupid how one person can be "in a relationship" with someone today and not be in it tomorrow.

Hence, I feel like I'm born a few centuries too late, in the wrong era perhaps. I should have been born when love was supposed to be felt from the inside and not something that you do just for the sake of it.

P.S.: Your whole post was beautiful! It's almost crushing for me that someone doesn't feel something as beautiful for me as that was.

I hope the du***ss that you're in love with gets it! Good luck.

SomeoneSomewhere said:

I really can't understand that either. It seems so stupid how one person can be "in a relationship" with someone today and not be in it tomorrow.

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I can't understand why love can't last. Maybe it was never love at all... who knows... who knows what love is, really.

We're slaves of our emotions even if they can destroy us.

I've learned not to feel unrequited love in one way. Being tortured by being stuck in the friend or special-buddy zone and seeing her run off with someone else. After several times it's conditioned me to be cold-hearted. So I fear the day that someone will get to me through that armor. Heartbreak is a feeling I couldn't care less of experiencing ever again.

Sigh. Oh honey, I know. All the advice in the world didn't mean anything because I thought this one guy was "the one" . Took me years to realize: I can't even be friends with the dude. I didn't like his not-recognizing-I-have-feelings behaviors and words, which is a requirement for my friendship.

What did I do to get over it? Lots of things. You name it, I probably tried it, just to "get over them".

My anxiety and stress over the loss was physically painful: for about 2 months I would wake up as if someone had pushed my chest for hours during the night. I lost weight because my appetite went down, and I had to change my diet because my stomach no longer could handle certain foods. I had write down everything, because my memory was shot. My legs often felt wobbly and I would get "dizzy attacks". Seeing couples holding hands was upsetting, etc. etc.

But day by day, I finally realized that "losing him" was not the end of the world. The pain from my chest was gone, and I could keep my balance doing yoga poses, without crying.

Intellectually, yes, I knew he didn't give a **** about me, but emotionally, I was still dreaming about another reality in which he wasn't made up of my excuses and fantasies.

You might want to check out http://www.gettingpastyourbreakup.com/gettingpastyourpast/ where you can meet a whole community of people who are dealing with similar situations with yours.

You will and can get through it. You said that you've "worked on [your]self from the inside out and the outside in to try and rearrange [your] priorities". Well, these things take time, and it is painful, yes, but you just keep going. Someday, eventually,you might want to date again. And you will see them and think "hot ****, dat ass!"(or any variations on that theme) But you don't need to right now, and that's ok.

ladyforsaken said:

I can't understand why love can't last. Maybe it was never love at all... who knows... who knows what love is, really.

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Because what people call love often isn't.

perfanoff said:

We're slaves of our emotions even if they can destroy us.

I've learned not to feel unrequited love in one way. Being tortured by being stuck in the friend or special-buddy zone and seeing her run off with someone else. After several times it's conditioned me to be cold-hearted. So I fear the day that someone will get to me through that armor. Heartbreak is a feeling I couldn't care less of experiencing ever again.

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Yeah I'm somewhat similar. Over the last couple of years I've learned from my experience, rejections, and wasted time, if you put yourself out there and you do not get a yes, it is always a no. No matter what is said by the other person, if it's not a yes then treat it as rejection. Saves time, energy, and heartache. It probably takes a lot of pressure off of the other person too.

Sure it makes me feel like honeysuckle getting rejected constantly, but it beats pining after someone that is never going to give a real chance.

just wanted to give hugs to everyone who's hurting.

It's so hard. They are so lucky to be loved as you love them. Your words are heartbreaking, but beautiful.

It is possible to get over people. It might take time, it might seem impossible, but it can happen. Most people aren't with their first love, but that doesn't mean they didn't love them. But that doesn't make it hurt less when it's happening to you

kamya said:

Yeah I'm somewhat similar. Over the last couple of years I've learned from my experience, rejections, and wasted time, if you put yourself out there and you do not get a yes, it is always a no. No matter what is said by the other person, if it's not a yes then treat it as rejection. Saves time, energy, and heartache. It probably takes a lot of pressure off of the other person too.

Sure it makes me feel like honeysuckle getting rejected constantly, but it beats pining after someone that is never going to give a real chance.

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Quite. If someone you know isn't interested in you now it's unlikely they ever will be.

kamya said:

perfanoff said:

We're slaves of our emotions even if they can destroy us.

I've learned not to feel unrequited love in one way. Being tortured by being stuck in the friend or special-buddy zone and seeing her run off with someone else. After several times it's conditioned me to be cold-hearted. So I fear the day that someone will get to me through that armor. Heartbreak is a feeling I couldn't care less of experiencing ever again.

Click to expand...

Yeah I'm somewhat similar. Over the last couple of years I've learned from my experience, rejections, and wasted time, if you put yourself out there and you do not get a yes, it is always a no. No matter what is said by the other person, if it's not a yes then treat it as rejection. Saves time, energy, and heartache. It probably takes a lot of pressure off of the other person too.

Sure it makes me feel like honeysuckle getting rejected constantly, but it beats pining after someone that is never going to give a real chance.

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I share your sentiment.

If things aren't going where you want just make yourself scarce. Works like a charm.