Unrequited Love - What to Do? (7 Reasons Why It’s Dangerous)

Unrequited love happens in the life of almost every person, putting him before a difficult choice. What to do if this happens to you? Is it possible to avoid suffering or quickly get rid of it? How do psychologists advise dealing with unrequited love? Is there any point in fighting and are we able to take control of it? The answers are in the article below.

Unrequited love how painful it hurts

Love is a feeling known to many. A man in love grows wings out of happiness, he is in the clouds, and his whole life seems rosy to him. But this is only possible if the love is mutual.

What if love is unrequited? A person is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he cannot concentrate on school or work, his will is paralyzed, and he doesn’t want anything else. The only thing he wants is to see the object of his love.

How painful it is when a person loves, but does not receive reciprocal feelings in return. When the object of love is absolutely indifferent to you and, even worse, loves another person for whose sake he is capable of anything.

In life, unrequited love sometimes ends in tears. It can lead to depression and even suicide. One-sided love is especially dangerous in adolescence and young adulthood.

Love from a scientific point of view - a cold look at feelings

People with a pragmatic character will be able to cope most easily with a situation where unrequited love strikes. It will be enough for them to look at all these concepts of “love and dislike” from the point of view of science. And there, by the way, everything is completely simple, explainable and prosaic: “The feeling of love is a unique chain of biochemical reactions that occur in our brain, provoking the activation of certain hormones: endorphin, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin.” Dopamine, which dominates at the first stage of falling in love and the peak of passion, fully explains the feeling of euphoria that is associated with all sensations of love, both mutual and unrequited. Next, those hormones will prevail that will convey the characteristics of your relationship: a quiet and calm life with your loved one will lead to an increase in oxytocin, and scandals and misunderstandings will lead to an increase in cortisol.

Unrequited love problems

Unrequited love occurs among complex and insecure people who have various problems:

They lack a certain level of self-respect and self-worth;
Unrequited love often occurs in people brought up in an atmosphere of negative attitude towards life;
Most often, unrequited love is experienced by people who are afraid to share their feelings with the person they love. They prefer to suffer better alone;
Children from dysfunctional families in which there was no love and mutual understanding often suffer from unrequited love;
Conservative people also suffer from it. Even for the sake of love, they do not want to change anything in their lives;
And people who cannot understand themselves and their feelings.

Consequences of unreciprocated feelings

Here everything depends on the lover himself. If this is a strong personality, then the person soon realizes that he cannot achieve reciprocal feelings by force; he will draw a conclusion and try to somehow solve the problem. Get over this feeling and avoid this in the future.

The weaker ones will be very worried, experience a feeling of depression, even to extreme measures.

In this case, it is simply necessary to seek psychological help in order to avoid serious consequences for physical and mental health. Finding a way out here on your own will not be easy. It feels like a quagmire - the more you struggle, the deeper you get stuck.

Possible origins of unrequited love

The origins of unhappy love can come from childhood.

There was no mutual love between father and mother, and, having matured, a person does not believe that love can be mutual;
During childhood, parents did not give the child enough love. He lived in an atmosphere of severity, constant demands and does not believe that he can be loved;
The person doesn't love himself. He believes that someone who will love him must appear, but he himself does not try to give love to the one he likes;
The “bar” is too high. To improve the genetics of the next generations, we have a natural desire to choose a person who is better than us. But sometimes we are chosen by someone who is not at all what we would like;
Fear of loneliness. Having once made a choice, a person is afraid to break off the relationship, even if there has been no love in it for a long time. This is especially true for women with low self-esteem. They think “How can I live without him,” “Who needs me,” “Life is over.” And they try with all their might to get their partner back, deceiving themselves that he loves her, but in his own way.

Is there such love in the world? Types of love

If we are talking about feelings, then we should discard all rationality. There are no and cannot be unambiguous answers, a clear division into black and white. It cannot be said that one feeling is false and the other is true - logic does not work here. It also cannot be said that a mutual feeling is love, and a non-mutual feeling is not. Sometimes it seems to people that everything is fine, the relationship is wonderful, but in fact this feeling turns out to be not mutual love. If we consider love through the prism of reciprocity, then it can be conditionally divided into mutual and non-reciprocal. In one case, the object responds to the feeling of the other, and in the second does not experience sympathy or reciprocal attraction.

How to survive unrequited love

It is very difficult to survive unrequited love, although they say “Time heals.” What to do if you give up, the pain is unbearable and burns everything inside, life is filled with despondency, and your heart is breaking?

But you will still have to survive this period of life. Stop and look around. Just because you are in despair, life does not stop. Everything flows as usual. You need to understand for yourself that your loved one is not your property, he cannot belong to you, just like you cannot belong to anyone. And the cure for unrequited love is you yourself.

Pull yourself together, try to distract yourself from unhappy love and begin active actions that will become a stepping stone to a new life.

To survive unhappy love, try to look at the situation differently.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, do what you love;
Remove everything that reminds you of your loved one out of sight;
Take care of yourself. Change your hairstyle, hair color, wardrobe;
Don't spend evenings and weekends at home. Chat with friends, go to various events. Avoid places where you might encounter the object of your passion;
Remember that there is not just one person of the opposite sex. Take a closer look, maybe someone is showing interest in you. Reciprocate his feelings. Who knows, maybe this is your destiny;
Take off your rose-colored glasses. You saw only the merits in the object of your love and did not notice the flaws. Look at him soberly, he is probably not as ideal as you imagined him to be.

What to do if you love, but you are not there

Many people believe that unrequited love only brings negative experiences, leaving bitterness and tears. If you have already done everything possible to attract the attention of your chosen one, but in return you do not get what you want, then try to distract yourself from the object of sympathy and realize that you can benefit.

The benefits of unrequited love

This idea may seem absurd and clichéd at first, but you can actually benefit from what is happening. Many people know the common expression that “if fate threw a sour lemon, then you need to make lemonade from it.”

If you have not already achieved reciprocity, then think about the positive aspects of the condition:

Learning perseverance and willpower
. Non-reciprocal love builds character well. We have to learn endurance and take care even in difficult conditions of rejection.
Let's learn to appreciate
. Faced with non-reciprocal love, we learn to appreciate any signs of attention from a loved one. Usually in the situation under discussion there is little attention, it is especially valuable and is reproduced in memory more than once. When we meet mutual love in the future, we do not treat it as something natural - it becomes even more beautiful than it would have been before unrequited love.
Let's become more attractive
. This is what happens more often. Having failed to arouse the proper interest in the person we like, we try to change ourselves, and, as a rule, these changes happen for the better. Men usually become more interested in sports, and often turn their new hobby into a good habit. Women experiment more often with their appearance, begin to take care of themselves more carefully, and the results are not long in coming.
Let's become more inventive
. Having fallen in unrequited love, many people begin to think about how to conquer their beloved (beloved), and these thoughts motivate them to take extraordinary and memorable actions. It is possible that the object of adoration will not appreciate the effort, but in the process of thinking about various surprises, we draw many interesting ideas from various sources, and they may be useful in the future.
Let's become more attentive
. This phenomenon also has a logical explanation. Mindfulness develops in several directions. Firstly, we begin to notice a person’s desires and hobbies in order to match them. Secondly, we become more attentive to his surroundings, trying to understand which people arouse his interest.
Let's learn to be more proactive
. Non-reciprocal love often adds initiative and perseverance to a character. If before we did not strive to manifest it, or simply did not know how, in such a situation everything changes. Since a person who is not interested in us does not show himself in any way, we have to do this, simultaneously discovering new previously unknown facets in ourselves.
We take care of other people's feelings
. Of course, after experiencing unrequited love, some begin to take revenge on others, breaking their hearts and forcing them to go through various levels of suffering. Most people, on the contrary, learn tolerance, kindness and compassion. How does this manifest itself? Often, when trying to break through the wall of someone else’s indifference, we remember how we demonstrated coldness to someone else’s expression of feelings. Having realized what this person was experiencing, we strive to apologize and show attention - something that we were not able to give before. And in the future, we will become more tolerant of other people’s manifestations of love and will not allow ourselves to be callously ignored.

Let us summarize the points listed above: having experienced unreciprocated love, we learn many useful lessons for ourselves and discover important facets that would have remained in the shadows if not for the encounter with indifference. The palette of feelings becomes wider, and imagination develops. We gain important experience in overcoming various internal barriers, fears, insecurities and complexes. Having learned these lessons, you should not position yourself as a “victim” of unrequited love.

How to get rid of unrequited love

When you are faced with unrequited love, you begin to look for reasons why it happened, what is wrong with you. You begin to find fault with your appearance and behavior. Your self-esteem decreases. And it doesn’t matter to you at all that other men are pursuing you. At this moment, only HE is needed. It seems to you that the world has collapsed, and then - tears, self-flagellation, apathy, depression.

But in the end, you understand that tears will not help your grief, and you find the strength to move on with your life. When the mental wound has healed a little, you suddenly realize that you are worth something and you have been underestimated. You need to learn to learn lessons, and from breakups too.

It is possible to survive unrequited love. The main thing is to understand that you simply have not met your true love yet. Even if it seems to you that the man you fell in love with is the one, the only one, still try to bring new feelings into your heart.

Yesterday's defeat very often becomes a stepping stone to tomorrow's victory. You can become depressed and dwell on your problems, cry about lost hopes. And you can become stronger and wiser.

Having experienced all this, you will understand that the one for whom you had to suffer no longer interests you, you do not need him. You have developed other interests. And what is connected with your unhappy love is yesterday. And today you say “thank you” to him because, thanks to him, you have become strong and confident and realized that you have not yet met your true love.

How to fix the situation?

Having read the previous sections, you might have gotten the impression that one-sided sympathy is a hopeless matter, doomed to failure in advance. We hasten to reassure you that everything is not as clear as it may seem at first glance. There are cases when a person managed to overcome the indifference of a partner and emerge victorious from the problem. Do you want the same? The following psychological tricks will help you with this:

Learn to understand your chosen one. Simple advice, but difficult to implement. Oddly enough, but your happiness depends on it. Why? It's simple, understanding your partner's needs and his inner world - you take a giant step towards mutual sympathy. Recent research in the field of interpersonal relationships has shown that people are more likely to choose partners who demonstrate their sincere interest in them and prefer to talk about them rather than about themselves.
If you notice that your hobbies with your chosen one are in different areas of interest, then there is only one way out - to adapt to the preferences of the object of passion. For example, he loves traveling outdoors, and you love growing begonias at home. Do you want to achieve reciprocal love? Then it’s time for you to buy boots with strong soles, a sleeping bag and learn to make a fire with one match. Otherwise, your sympathy will remain an unrequited dummy. Well, the begonias on the windowsill do not attract tourists, even if you crack them!
Try to enter the company of your lover. However, this should be done not directly, but in a roundabout way. For these purposes, use friends who are already part of the society you need. Let them introduce you there, as if by chance. Otherwise, your partner will get the impression that you are stalking him. And this never led to any good.
Through mutual friends, try to find out what personal qualities in another person attract your chosen one. Perhaps all his past girlfriends were well-read or excellent cooks. Take this knowledge and improve your skills. This is the only way you will get closer to achieving your cherished goal: to be with him.
No intrusiveness. Psychologists are convinced that obsession is the “first sign” of unrequited love. You start constantly calling the person you like, besiege his entrance in the hope of meeting your eyes, bump into him a hundred times at work or school, carefully monitor his social networks. And what is the outcome? You are absolutely indifferent to him. Why? No one is ready to love those who have no self-respect. So avoid importunity and use common sense in everything.

Can unrequited love become mutual?

If you love a person selflessly, but he does not know about your existence, and you have never communicated with him, then it will be difficult to win him. Get into his circle of acquaintances, meet one or more of his friends, but don't try to be too intrusive. Learn as much as you can about your crush. Find out what he is interested in, what interests him, what music he likes, what books he reads. You can get such information from social networks or from his friends.

You can use this information to interest your lover. If you start a conversation about his favorite movie, for example, he will most likely join in the conversation. Then move on to discussing other hobbies. Perhaps he will invite you to spend time with him.

When the opportunity arises to spend time together, don't be too intrusive, but don't be too distant either. Try to interest him so that meetings with you become an important part of his life. Come up with original ways to spend time that will be interesting to him.

You probably already understand what type of girls he likes, try to match him. If he likes girls who are calm and modest, talk less and listen more. If you like them funny, be funny.

Don't pester him with excessive attention, don't hang around his neck. Light flirting will help speed up the development of relationships. Appear weak so that he will want to protect you.

What is love without reciprocation?

You can’t order your heart, as they say. The object of love does not always reciprocate, and we are forced to experience deep feelings, only in our dreams counting on joint happiness.

To put it in a dry term, unrequited love is a feeling of deep emotional attachment to a person that does not evoke any return from him. A person who has fallen in love often notices the following symptoms:

Mental pain that intensifies when meeting the object of passion.
Nervous state, insomnia.
Deterioration in appearance: weight loss, bruises under the eyes.
Problems at work and school: loss of concentration, lack of motivation, absenteeism.
Psychological disorders: panic attacks, depression.
Quarrels with close relatives and friends.
Reluctance to meet and communicate with other members of the opposite sex.

As a result, many of these symptoms can lead to a significant deterioration in the quality of life of the person in love. There are determined and positive people who pull themselves together and continue to live, no matter what. But more emotional lovers, who are predisposed to nervous disorders, really suffer, receiving real mental trauma from unrequited feelings.

What is unrequited love? This is an almost uncontrollable craving for a person, regular dreams with his participation and a desire to be close to him. When a desire cannot be realized, it becomes a mania, as well as the cause of pseudo-heroic actions, various stupidities and sometimes even suicide. That's why you need to know how to get rid of the feeling of unrequited love if you feel that the experience has gone on for too long.

Can non-reciprocal love develop into mutual love?

What do real people think about this?

Feedback on the forum

Of course, people’s situations are different and there cannot be a clear opinion.

Unrequited feeling among guys

Many women have the opinion that only the fair half of humanity can have unrequited feelings. However, it is not. Men are also prone to love without hope of mutual feelings. Moreover, among male representatives, love can persist throughout life; it can push a person to heroic deeds, and maybe even to crazy actions. Although men are still less likely to suffer from unrequited feelings. Perhaps this is dictated by the fact that they first of all think not about starting a family, but about their basic instinct. When one young lady does not reciprocate, there is always another who will not refuse. But if such problems are constantly observed, the man is lonely all the time, the issue of unrequited love arises very acutely.

A guy with low self-esteem takes his failures to heart and worries a lot. A confident young man is not upset about rejection and easily switches to other girls.
Development of an inferiority complex. When a person has constant failures in his personal life, he begins to doubt his attractiveness. This may lead to the desire to get drunk or take drugs.

If you are visited by unrequited love, you do not need to dwell on this feeling. A person who is weak in spirit can even end up committing suicide. Unrequited love causes depression, life loses all meaning.

Fear of commitment and intimacy 5

A person sometimes deliberately chooses an object of adoration for himself, knowing in advance that there is no point in hoping for reciprocity. For what? Here, the fly in the ointment indicates a relationship in childhood, a strong attachment that could cause heart trauma. The heart wants to continue to love at least someone, but the fear of commitment and intimacy prevents the creation of normal relationships. And one-sided love ensures that you don’t have to face this fear. Unrequited feelings from afar are a great avoidance technique.

An attempt to conquer

If you want to compete for your love, you can try to win the girl’s attention by following the recommendations.

Show your persistence and perseverance.
Be generous.
Show the young lady your romantic nature.
Show off your sense of humor.
Increase your self-esteem and gain confidence in your abilities.
Try to become popular among women.
A girl will definitely pay attention to a man who combines tenderness and strength.
In order to definitely conquer your beloved, you can try to become her ideal, for this you need to first find out what he is like. However, if you realize that you are far from reaching him, then it is better to come to terms with the state of affairs and try to forget your unrequited feelings.

Unrequited love is an excellent incentive for self-development and self-improvement. The main thing is that a man understands that it is necessary to act, and not sit and kill himself with his suffering. Use your love to become better inside and outside. If necessary, go to the gym, become an erudite person, achieve success in your career. Serious work on yourself will significantly increase your self-esteem and will arouse greater interest among others in your person. After such changes, it is possible that the once beloved young lady will “lose her head,” but she will no longer evoke former feelings in your heart, and then the girl will have unrequited love.