Unrequited love

Dante looks longingly at Beatrice Portinari (in yellow) as she passes by him with Lady Vanna (in red) in Dante and Beatrice, by Henry Holiday

Unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep affections. The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines unrequited as "not reciprocated or returned in kind."^[1]

"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."^[2]

Analysis

The inability of the unrequited lover to express and fulfill emotional needs may lead to feelings such as depression, low self-esteem, anxiety and rapid mood swings between depression and euphoria. A universal feeling, by some estimates affecting 98% of all people during their lifetimes,^[3] unrequited love has naturally been a frequent subject in popular culture. Unfortunately; movies, books and songs often portray the would-be lover's persistence as paying off when the rejector comes to his or her senses....The presence of this script makes it easy to understand why an unrequited lover persists in the face of rejection'.^[4]

'Platonic friendships provide a fertile soil for unrequited love'.^[5] Thus the object of unrequited love is often a friend or acquaintance, someone regularly encountered in the workplace, during the course of work or other activities involving large groups of people. This creates an awkward situation in which the admirer has difficulty in expressing his/her true feelings, a fear that revelation of feelings might invite rejection, cause embarrassment or might end all access to the beloved, as a romantic relationship may be inconsistent with the existing association.

In terms of the feelings of the hopeful one, it could be said that they undergo about the same amount of pain as does someone who is going through the breakup of a romantic relationship without ever having had the benefit of being in that relationship^{[citation needed]}.

Rejectors

'There are two dark sides to unrequited love, but only one is made familiar by our culture'^[6] - 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.^[3] 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',^[7] and vice versa. The role of the rejector will often force them to 'feel morally repugnant and guilty'; and whereas the unrequited lover may always retain some hope, 'the rejector's potential outcomes are nearly all bad'.^[8]

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 which have less relevance in democratic societies with relatively high social mobility, or less rigid codes of sexual fidelity. Nonetheless, the literary record suggests a degree of euphoria in the limerence 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"'.^[9]

Eric Berne 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 gazing at Beatrice than Beatrice walking by him in apparent disdain'.^[10]

Remedies

Ovid in his Remedia Amoris 'provides advice on how to overcome inappropriate or unrequited love. The solutions offered include travel, teetotalism, bucolic pursuits, and (ironically) avoidance of love poets'.^[11]

'Tennov (1979) has suggested that the only cure for being in love is to get indisputable evidence that the target of one's love is not interested'.^[12]

Cultural analogues

• In the wake of his real-life experiences with Maud Gonne, in a further twist W. B. Yeats wrote of those who 'had read/All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing/Returned and yet unrequited love'.^[13]

• Proust by contrast claimed that 'the only successful (sustainable) love is unrequited love'.^[14]

• Sometimes 'unrequited love...has been invoked as a figure for the condition of modernity itself'.^[15]

See also

• Broken heart
• Erotomania
• Existential crisis
• Love-shyness
• Mamihlapinatapai
• Nice guy
• Obsessive love
• Romantic friendship

References

1. ^ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unrequited
2. ^ Eric Berne, Sex in Human Loving (Penguin 1970) p. 130
3. ^ ^{a b} Goleman, Daniel (1993-02-09). "Pain of Unrequited Love Afflicts the Rejecter, Too - NYTimes.com". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE1DB1E3DF93AA35751C0A965958260. Retrieved 2010-03-31. 
4. ^ B. H. Spitzberg/W. R. Cupach, The Dark Side of Close Relationships (1998) p. 251
5. ^ Spitzberg, p. 311
6. ^ Spitzberg, p. 308
7. ^ Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (London 1988) p. 9
8. ^ Spitzberg, p. 312
9. ^ Mary Ward, The Literature of Love (2009) p. 45-6
10. ^ Eric Berne, Sex in Human Loving (Penguin 1970) p. 238
11. ^ A. Grafton et al, The Classical Tradition (2010) p. 664
12. ^ R. F. Baumeister/S. R. Wotman, Breaking Hearts (1994) p. 150
13. ^ Y. B. Yeats, The Poems (London 1983) p. 155
14. ^ Pippin, p. 326
15. ^ Pippin, p. 326n

Further reading

• Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York 1951) THE THIRD PARTITION: LOVE-MELANCHOLY
• J. Reid Meloy, Violent Attachments (1997)
• Peabody, Susan 1989, 1994, 2005, "Addiction to Love: Overcoming Obsession and Dependency in Relationships."

External links

• How unrequited love can be an illness, or even fatal (BBC)
• Agony and rapture