Unrequited Love
Unrequited — (of a feeling, especially love) Not returned or rewarded. — Oxford Languages Definition
How do I feel about unrequited love? This is a loaded question. On one hand, it could be beautiful, honorable, or considered selfless. On the other, it can be humbling, crippling, or crushing.
It can sometimes feel like a thrill. You may be the only one who truly knows how you feel about that other person. It can be fun to have a secret. But it can also be deceiving. It’s easy to get to a place where you feel like that person owes you something. This may cause you to feel hurt or betrayed later because your feelings are not reciprocated. Sadly, there would be no justification for you. The feeling of rejection is heavy. Where it pertains to romantic love, the consequences of unrequited feelings are not worth the stock put in.
Personally, I have had more experience with this topic than I would like to admit. However, I’ve learned so much from each one so I hope by sharing my experience I can help you gain some insight and wisdom in the process.
The One You Knew Would End This Way
I’ll keep names anonymous for the sake of everyone involved. One of my first experiences with unrequited love, happened my senior year of high school. It was after a breakup from a long term relationship. I was hurting, but eventually, somehow I found solace in a new friend, even a group of new friends. I met this guy, in gym class. That was the moment I really saw him. He was quiet, but well spoken - handsome but different - smart, brilliant, and had a deep interest in religion. I loved that he loved God. He was very sweet and charming. We became close friends pretty quickly. We would often hang out together just us. We would go to the gym together or I would drive him places or drop him off. We were truly doing just friends things. I still ended up having romantic feelings for him, probably because I was still healing from my breakup. It definitely helped to have someone be so gracious and listen to me. So it happened. My heart was open and I started to see all the good in my friend. I realized that he was the type guy I wanted or thought I needed.That would be the type of guy with a gentle spirit, God fearing, intelligent, and a guy’s guy. So, I told him. He knew. We both knew I was the only one feeling something more. I appreciate the way that he responded. It was pretty much us both just addressing the elephant in the room. After we talked and both said what we knew each other would say, we agreed to stay friends. And we did. After the admittance, we were fine. I was of course a little disappointed but, truly, I had no hard feelings about it. Our friendship did eventually end for other reasons about a year later, but I learned from our situation that it is okay to take a chance sometimes. I also learned that people can remain truly just friends after one person likes the other. However, I don’t believe that would’ve been as easy if my expectations had been different. In this case, I had been hopeful but realistic.
The One You Wish Had Never Ended
This one hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew from the very moment that I saw him in communications class that I was in love with this man. Our first interaction was him asking me to help him study for a test we had coming up. We met at the library that day, but not much studying got done. He wasn’t very confident in his ability to learn which always made me feel very sad for him. Anyway, we ended up leaving the library and just sitting in my car talking for awhile. It was weird because we were friendly but there also this odd kind of spark between us. If you were to look at us, most people wouldn’t put us together (me the bookworm and him the football jock). We became good friends pretty quickly. We would always sit in my car and talk to each other for hours on hours. Our friendship was very real and very deep. I know you may be wondering, so what could go wrong then? Well, he had a girlfriend. At first I never really thought that would be an issue because I thought he was single (especially because of the nature of the questions he was asking me). But eventually he admitted that he had a “situation”, a.k.a. a whole girlfriend back home! Now, I do not suggest doing as I did and getting closer to someone like this if you are ever in this situation. I admit that I probably at that moment should have put up some REAL boundaries with this guy in our friendship, but I didn’t. I thought I did. I thought that by not telling him how I felt but still being there emotionally for him that I was being a good friend. In reality, I was just setting myself up for failure, digging myself deeper and deeper into the whole.
One day he told me he was leaving school. I was devastated. Aside from a girl friend of mine, he was my closest friend, and I was about to lose him. It felt like torture knowing that every day that got closer to the end of the semester was one day closer to the End. You can probably guess that I told him. We were in my car talking about him leaving and I just completely broke down into tears. Everything came out. The floodgates were opened! My feelings were reciprocated to an extent, he told me that he loved me, that he used to have a crush on me, and he was attracted to me. He also made it clear that he wasn’t looking to be in a relationship. I respected that (or at least I thought that I could). Things presumably ended with his girlfriend. When they did, we basically started a situation-ship which ultimately resulted in me getting burned when all was said and done. I’ll go into that story deeper on the blog in the future, but for now, just understand that it took me YEARS to heal from the fallout of this arrangement. What I learned from this experience is that men are honest. I played myself in this situation by thinking that: 1) he would come around and eventually want to be with me in a real relationship, 2) two wrongs make a right, and 3) thinking that love happens like in fairy tales or 90’s romance moves. I was naive and mistaken, but in the end I have gained more wisdom and discernment.
The One You Never Saw Coming
This one hit me like a slow moving train. It was subtle, gradual, and steady. I was totally unsuspecting until BOOM — the the train was right in front of my face and too large to ignore. It was right there in front of me, taking over, but it was too late to reverse the feelings. They were there now. This would be my most recent experience with unrequited love. Arguably, it’s probably one of the most hurtful ones. Not because this guy intended to hurt me, but because I had no basis to even express why I was hurting to him. I knew if I told him how I felt, the friendship would never be the same. At the time, I just couldn’t take a hit like that so I suffered instead. It all started, once again, after a breakup of sorts. Technically I wasn’t dating the guy I “broke up” with, but we had dated in the past (like WAY in the past, eight years prior to this experience). Anyway, when he and I went our separate ways, it was because of broken trust. I was down bad. That guy was hiding something very big from me, and when I found out, I was devastated. At first, I was pissed, but then I was broken by the realization that he not only hid something (which is a discrete lie). He also blatantly lied to me like it was nothing. The only person I knew to comfort me was train guy so I went to him and told him about what happened. As we sat there on that tiny park bench around the end of May, I cried my eyes out. He was so gentle with me, quietly consoling me and telling me that I deserved better. I guess that’s when it clicked for me that he was right. However, I didn’t recognize that he was the “better” I wanted until months later.
After that day we became closer. We would talk on face time when I was away at school. When I was in town we would hang out like always, but I started feeling like I could be much more open with him. It was a sense of safety that was hard to come by for me. It took months of this for my heart to become open to the idea that I may have had a crush on him. When I finally came to the realization that I liked him romantically, I decided I would tell him. I was nervous but ready to get it off my chest. We met at the park one day and ironically we both had news for each other. I let him go first, and unfortunately, that was the end for me. I never got to my news. His news was SO big. It was exciting, confusing, and hurtful all at the same time. I truly love him, so I knew I couldn’t tell him how I felt after what he’d just shared. So that was the end of my…. fantasy love. Even though I was hurting inside from what he shared with me that day, I chose to love him in that moment and be the listener for once. It felt good to be trusted, so I just took what I could get I guess. It’s been about 1-2 years since that encounter with him and we’ve had a lot of turbulence in our friendship since. Honestly, I believe I am responsible for a lot of it because I was never 100% truthful with him about what I was feeling as a result of what he told me. Now I just take it day by day.
Finally, I’ve come to the realization that no matter how much you love someone, you don’t get to choose who they love or how they love you. All you can do is be patient, kind, and honest. I have also learned that it’s okay to have boundaries. Even if you think you would trust someone with your life, that doesn’t always mean that you should share everything with them. Restraint and discipline are hard principles to master. Because of all the internal turbulence I’ve had from all these experiences, I have learned, and am actively still learning, how to practice restraint, discipline, respect, honesty, and grace among other things. To whoever is reading this, I want to encourage you not to stop loving or feeling loved by others because of unreciprocated feelings. It can be easy to become bitter or shy or broken when you love someone that doesn’t love you back. The thing is, sometimes others may not know your worth, the timing may be wrong, or it just isn’t meant to be and that is more than okay. Just keep your head up. If you do share your feelings with the one you love, be proud of yourself for having the courage to be honest. If you keep them to yourself, be proud of yourself for having self control. In either case, understand that how the other person feels about you should not make or break you. You are loved, beautiful, and whole regardless because God says you are.
Peace & Love,
K.V.B.
