Unrequited love or one-sided love is

love Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest Interpersonal relationship, interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of ...

that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such by the beloved. The beloved may not be aware of the admirer's deep and pure

affection Affection or fondness is a "disposition or state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of love. It has given rise to a number of branches of philosophy and psychology concerning emotion, disease, influence, and sta ...

, or may consciously reject it. The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines unrequited as "not reciprocated or returned in kind". Psychiatrist

Eric Berne Eric Berne (May 10, 1910 – July 15, 1970) was a Canadian-born psychiatrist who created the theory of transactional analysis as a way of explaining human behavior. Berne's theory of transactional analysis was based on the ideas of Freud ...

states in his book '' Sex in Human Loving'' that "Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner." However, the philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

contends that "indispensable...to the lover is his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference." Unrequited love stands in contrast to redamancy, the act of reciprocal love.

Analysis

Route to unrequited love

According to Dr. Roy Baumeister, what makes a person desirable is a complex and highly personal mix of many qualities and traits. But falling for someone who is much more desirable than oneself — whether because of physical beauty or attributes like charm, intelligence, wit or status — Baumeister calls this kind of mismatch "prone to find their love unrequited" and that such relationships are falling upward. According to some psychologists opposites do attract. ' Platonic friendships provide a fertile soil for unrequited love'. Thus the object of unrequited love is often a friend or acquaintance, someone regularly encountered in the workplace, during the course of work, school or other activities involving large groups of people. This creates an awkward situation in which the admirer has difficulty in expressing their true feelings, a fear that revelation of feelings might invite rejection, cause

embarrassment Embarrassment or awkwardness is an emotional state that is associated with mild to severe levels of discomfort, and which is usually experienced when someone commits (or thinks of) a socially unacceptable or frowned-upon act that is witnessed ...

or might end all access to the beloved, as a romantic relationship may be inconsistent with the existing association.

Unrequited love victims

The inability of the unrequited lover to express or declare their love often leads to negative

feelings Feelings are subjective self-contained phenomenal experiences. According to the ''APA Dictionary of Psychology'', a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations ...

such as depression, low self-esteem,

anxiety Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...

and rapid mood swings between depression and

euphoria Euphoria ( ) is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness. Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise, laughter, listening to or making music and d ...

Rejecters

'There are two bad sides to unrequited love, but only one is made familiar by our culture' – that of the lover, not the rejector. In fact, research suggests that the object of unrequited affection experiences a variety of negative emotions on a par with those of the suitor, including anxiety, frustration, and guilt. As Freud long since pointed out, 'when a woman sues for love, to reject and refuse is a distressing part for a man to play'.

Advantages

Unrequited love has long been depicted as noble, an unselfish and stoic willingness to accept suffering. Literary and artistic depictions of unrequited love may depend on assumptions of social distance that have less relevance in western, democratic societies with relatively high social mobility and less rigid codes of sexual fidelity. Nonetheless, the literary record suggests a degree of euphoria in the feelings associated with unrequited love, which has the advantage as well of carrying none of the responsibilities of mutual relationships: certainly, "rejection, apparent or real, may be the catalyst for inspired literary creation... 'the poetry of frustration'."

considered that "the man who is loved by a woman is lucky indeed, but the one to be envied is he who loves, however little he gets in return. How much greater is

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ' ...

gazing at Beatrice than Beatrice walking by him in apparent disdain".

"Remedies"

Roman poet

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom ...

in his ''

Remedia Amoris ''Remedia Amoris'' (''Love's Remedy'' or ''The Cure for Love'') . 2 ADis an 814-line poem in Latin by Roman poet Ovid. In this companion poem to '' The Art of Love'', Ovid offers advice and strategies to avoid being hurt by love feelings, or ...

'' "provides advice on how to overcome inappropriate or unrequited love. The solutions offered include travel, teetotalism,

bucolic A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depic ...

pursuits, and ironically, avoidance of love poets".

Cultural examples

Western

*In the wake of his real-life experiences with

Maud Gonne Maud Gonne MacBride ( ga, Maud Nic Ghoinn Bean Mhic Giolla Bhríghde; 21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an English-born Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. Of Anglo-Irish descent, she was won over to Irish nationalism ...

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

wrote of those who 'had read/All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing/Returned and yet unrequited love'. *According to

Robert B. Pippin Robert Buford Pippin (born September 14, 1948) is an American philosopher. He is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the Univ ...

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous ...

claimed that 'the only successful (sustainable) love is unrequited love', something which according to Pippin, 'has been invoked as a figure for the condition of

modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the "Age of Reas ...

itself'.

Eastern

*The medieval Japanese poet

Saigyō was a famous Japanese poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura period. Biography Born in Kyoto to a noble family, he lived during the traumatic transition of power between the old court nobles and the new samurai warriors. After the start ...

may have turned from samurai to monk because of unrequited love, one of his waka asking: "What turned me to wanting/to break with the world-bound life?/Maybe the one whose love/turned to loathing and who now joins with me in a different joy". In other poems he wrote: "Alas, I'm foreordained to suffer, loving deep a heartless lass....Would I could know if there be such in far-off China!" *In China, passion tends to be associated not with happiness, but with sorrow and unrequited love.G Maciocia, ''The Psyche in Chinese Medicine'' (2009) p. 136

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Unrequited Love Grief Love Non-sexuality Philosophy of love Asymmetry ca:Amor no correspost