Non-reciprocal love: why is this happening?

Some of us reciprocate more often, while others suffer from one-sided affection all the time … And this is not an accident. There are reasons for this phenomenon. But things can change if you know how.

Almost all of us have a story of sympathy that has gone unrequited. “My parents rented a dacha for the summer, and a girl Lena lived next door, whom I really liked,” says 43-year-old Nikita, “we were no more than four when we met for the first time, and then for several years the story repeated itself: I dreamed of playing with her, made various children’s gifts, but Lenochka always liked some other boy from our company.

In childhood and adolescence, we seem to test ourselves, listen to our feelings, measuring their depth and strength. But even the first one-sided loves sometimes cause us not only light sadness, but also annoyance. And an adult unrequited passion causes real pain and sometimes distorts the line of fate. Especially if it lasts a long time — or repeats more than once …

Are we in the matrix?

A view of love as an element that is not subject to us and does not depend on our choice, developed in European culture in the era of romanticism and is still supported. But we lose our heads for a reason: we choose (albeit unconsciously) those whose behavior seems somehow familiar.

“Remember how you were loved as a child, and you will know how you will love in adulthood,” explains Inna Khamitova, a systemic family psychotherapist. — In childhood, we are surrounded by adults: not only parents, it can be a grandmother, grandfather, dad, nanny, older sister, brother — those who raise and care for us, and we adapt to them, create our own way of surviving nearby. This basic mode is reproduced in adult relationships.”

If our senior was turned on, approachable, and considerate, we look for love objects with the same qualities. But if we are used to the fact that those close to us are inaccessible, cold, hurt, we adapt to this situation. So it turns out that we find ourselves next to those who will hurt.

On a conscious level, we want to find something else, but unconsciously we repeat the situation that developed in childhood: we seem to believe that relationships should be just like that. Early experience becomes the matrix according to which we create new relationships.

be my ideal

We traditionally talk about unrequited love, implying the intensity and severity of this feeling. “But this is falling in love, that is, an intense experience of one’s fantasy about someone,” says Jungian psychotherapist Dmitry Kotenko, “when falling in love, we don’t feel the ground under our feet, while love is a connection with a real person, it requires reliable ground on which you can build relationships that can withstand heat and cold, rain and drought. And when someone says that he loves another unrequitedly for a long time, it is more correct to say that he maintains his love for the image.

But why do we support it? Maybe we just “like to suffer”, as witnesses of this experience sometimes say? No, unrequited lovers do not strive at all for suffering, but for connection: even if only mental, it saves from loneliness.

“Everyone has a need for close relationships,” Inna Khamitova emphasizes, “but building them is a lot of work.” By creating an illusory relationship with an image that lives in dreams, we save ourselves from several dangers at once: from the disappointment that is inevitable with a real close acquaintance, and from the invasion of unforeseen factors.

As sad as unrequited affection is, these relationships are paradoxically stable. They do not have to be rebuilt after the birth of a child, illness of a relative, moving, no need to be afraid of losing them …

“Remember the story of Solveig,” suggests Inna Khamitova, “if Peer Gynt had not wandered, but married her, cheated with neighbors and drank in taverns, would his image be so attractive?” The same can be said about many romantic plots: Rezanov and Conchita, Tatyana and Eugene Onegin… An unrequited lover lives in his own world, protected from the winds of reality and from time: the ideal does not grow old.

Getting close to reality

Deep dialogues with a lover occur in our imagination, but the torment of unrequited passion is real. “We project images of our soul onto another and confuse the spiritual thirst for integrity with ordinary human relationships,” Dmitry Kotenko explains. “If the thirst is great, we experience the illusion that it is this other who will make us whole and give us happiness.”

Rejection in a relationship (real or perceived) we perceive as separation from an important part of ourselves. But this is too big a request to a partner: the responsibility for spiritual development lies with us. The realization that happiness and the ability to feel wholeness does not depend on another, but on us, can calm suffering.

A real, not a mental conversation about feelings can bring you closer to reality. Why are we afraid of him, is it unpleasant for someone to hear “I like you”?

“Recognition is not a requirement, it does not break through boundaries and leaves freedom to another,” emphasizes Inna Khamitova. — But if you put the question like “marry me” or “I want you now” — this is a consumer attitude, not love. Or when it contains a hidden accusation: “I suffer from love, and you are to blame” — this is already emotional blackmail.

Therefore, first it is useful to become aware of your feelings. “Often confessions are not accepted because the addressee feels that they are not directed at him,” Dmitry Kotenko adds, “that the interlocutor is dreaming of someone fantastic. It can really be intimidating.»

We create figures of inaccessible lovers, explaining this to ourselves in different ways. Available seem boring; someone says: “I am a conqueror” and is only interested in married men, and someone: “I am worthless, they will not pay attention to me”; someone falls in love with celebrities. With this it would be good to go to a psychotherapist.

“But such a client has difficulties with intimacy,” notes Inna Khamitova, “he devalues ​​the other:“ what a moron, what nonsense, ”or is afraid of rejection. It can be helpful to read books to understand the deeper questions behind unrequited love. In this case, the therapist can become an “intermediate object”, with whom it is easier to enter into close safe contact, to open up.

There is no other way to create relationships other than learning how to create them. If we want to swim, we must enter the water.

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