By: Chinyanta Nkonde
It’s not so much about what happens to us in life that matters, but how we to respond to the situation at hand. Love is an amazing place to be; finding that one person who makes you happy and makes you feel fulfilled is amazing . Finding that one person who can reciprocate your feelings and love and having them to share and build love with mutual understanding. Grace is a heavenly gift, but if you don’t get the love you want, what happens and how does one cope with such?
You may have loved someone and wanted to be loved in return; maybe you didn’t get the outcome you hoped for but that doesn’t mean your love is meaningless.
The question is Did you learn something about yourself? Did you grow in some way?
The tricky thing about love is that we all expect it to be reciprocated and that’s just the nature of man. From creation, he is a relational being that seeks to have affection in his life and to be covered in love. Finding yourself in a situation where you don’t get the love you desire hurts more than anything. This calls for learning to Identify unrequited love, which “requires one’s ability to be honest with themselves about what’s going on.” This involves paying attention to the other person’s signals, even though accepting how they feel might be tough.
Rejection can certainly cause pain, but love can also linger and mellow into a different love that sometimes tends to change someone and make them obsessive. People easily develop traits of wanting to be approved after they go through an experience of having unreciprocated love. It may not seem very uncomforting now, but someday you might value the lessons you’ll get from this.
Unrequited love is usually associated with a feeling of longing that can begin to take over your emotions and taint reality. If you fail to adjust to the situation and your reality, things may turn out worse. In every situation you find yourself in, it is either a lesson or a defect resulting from your decisions and how you choose to respond to the situation.
Your feelings are always communicating with you. As you pay attention to the truth of your experience, your feelings can help point you in the right direction for you to either work out the pain you’re feeling or bury it deep inside and act like there was no problem to begin with.
If you keep experiencing unrequited love, it could help to consider whether this pattern says something about your needs. Falling in love with people who don’t return your feelings could suggest you feel like you should be in love with someone when you’re really happier with on your own. Maybe you don’t really want a relationship; there’s nothing wrong with that.
Unrequited love is dealt with differently by different people. Many people deal with this all the time. it doesn’t kill you from inside unless your thinking pattern makes this happen.
Sometimes unrequited love is a loss and it is normal to feel grief, anger, denial, and all the other things a person might feel after loss. Your feelings about the person you love are real, and the hopes you had were real.
In our culture, we don’t give space to mourn the loss of unrequited love. We tend to say either “Go get ‘em, try harder, your love will win out eventually!” or “Stop being pathetic and get over it.”
All beliefs/ideas like anything else is what we tell ourselves it is. We allow certain personal or others’ experiences, movies, books, quotes, advice into our mind at a surface level but some are taken so deep into our hearts, that it becomes part of our subconscious. These then affect our attitude and behaviour for life. And if we have to change this, it takes effort.
Why am I telling you this? Because some supposed truths made great imprints on my mind. This was usually based on the skillfulness of the articulation or the respect and regard I had towards the people who propounded those “truths” but sometimes just highly relating with a fantasy movie/book they’ve read and base their views and reasons from that.
Sometimes feelings do seem like we will never make it out of the cycle of pain that we’re experiencing, but our feelings can’t make the person we love love us back. That’s not the kind of magic they do. But try listening to them and seeing where else you might be able to channel their energy.
Remember that love doesn’t hurt , but your expectations, possessiveness, insecurities, jealousy, and actions do. Memories don’t hurt, love doesn’t hurt.
Attachment hurts cause it’s the expectation that hurt the imagined future that is now broken that hurts.
So with time, you’ll be able to adjust and just live your life without wondering if you were enough or not just cause you didn’t get the love you thought you deserved.
Join me right here next week for more.
