Unrequited love is the story of my life as a young adult (and even in my professional life; with friends, and family members who are toxic as an adult. I don’t share this from a victim mentality at all).

It’s been written about in books and poems; there are countless songs about unrequited love; and it’s been depicted in TV shows and movies since both have been around.

The heat heats up around the holidays with holiday movies and songs that romanticize this disastrous situation and then instill hope in the viewer that if their value is high enough, the love can be reciprocated.

My main issue with unrequited love is how glorified and romanticized it is. It’s portrayed more as the “norm” in terms of the basic settings of an epic/fantasy romance than as a very problematic, unsustainable, and completely unromantic setting, and it’s not your fault.

Instead of portraying it as a situation that would lead you to want reciprocity and mutuality, it often seems to portray the exact opposite.

Definition of Unrequited Love. What is Unrequited Love?

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “unrequited” as “unreciprocated or unrequited.”

When love is not returned, it is one-sided.

Adult relationships are not swings. They cannot remain one-sided.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I have had a one-sided relationship of any kind, it has not been great! It has not been joyful or fun. It has ultimately been a shameful, stressful, embarrassing experience that has begun a brutal and unfair inventory where I have criticized myself on every surface level. (Then, because I felt ugly and rejected, I would make even more terrible relationship decisions and become completely clingy.)

With all that said, it’s easy to assume that knowing whether or not love is reciprocated will be crystal clear. But that’s not always the case. It has personally caused me a great deal of confusion, humiliation, and self-loathing. I’ll cover both sides.

It’s important to know what to look for.

Clear Examples of Unrequited Love

I have fallen in love with someone who is simply unavailable to be in a relationship with you. This could mean that they are already in a relationship, are married, are a coworker (and would jeopardize your job if you dated them); are too young/too old (according to your value system—no judgment here as long as the law isn’t broken); etc.

You’ve developed intense romantic feelings and are convinced that you’re in love with your best friend who you know doesn’t feel the same way, or won’t feel the same way.

You want to get back with an ex who has moved on in a way that makes reconnecting romantically impossible.

You’ve developed intense romantic feelings for a character on a TV show, a celebrity in real life, or someone in a position of power that you “don’t have access to.”

You’ve developed intense romantic feelings for someone in a relationship with a friend or family member.

You’ve fallen in love with someone who you know doesn’t feel the same way.

5 Signs of Unrequited Love When It’s Not That Simple

Sometimes, you just don’t know it. Or there’s no clear, obvious hurdle to confirming it as unrequited love.

Here are the top five signs to look out for when the situation isn’t as clear-cut as the above. These signs may seem obvious. But when we’re in the thick of intense romantic feelings, it’s hard to acknowledge these signs that the heart wants to blind us to.

1. The person you’re interested in is more attached to you than others.

You’ve reached the point where you’ve expressed or even hinted at your feelings for this person. Your energy around them is different than others (whether you’re nervous and shy or more direct and intense). They seem tense and uncomfortable, and as a result, they become more attached to you.

2. They flirt with other people around you or talk about how attracted they are to others around you.

You feel ignored; almost as if they want you to see them flirting with others – whether it’s in person or technologically.

3. They ask you for dating advice in scenarios that don’t involve you.

There’s always an excuse that makes you ready to make obvious mistakes. You also feel desperate when you’re around them; like you never have enough time.

4. In your eyes, this person can do no wrong.
5. You put in all the effort.

It’s frustrating but you keep telling yourself that you just have to work harder and try harder; that you have to be better.

The bottom line is that if someone likes you, they will invest in you just as much.

All of this is not meant to discredit the person you desire. It’s wrong for them to take advantage of you and your feelings for them for personal gain. But more often than not, these are people who have healthy boundaries and, in some cases, have no idea how deep your feelings are.

I know that there are always exceptions to every rule and that loopholes can be punched in anything. But in my opinion, unrequited love has more of a longing side than it does true love.

This has all become a habit for me. I wasn’t able to deal with the other person not loving me until I identified the root of it all.
The Root Cause

For me, it was more about my unaddressed trauma and feelings of inadequacy than it was about the person I was hoping to ride off into the sunset with.

I developed a habit of finding myself in unrequited love situations because it was safe.

It was safer for me to give to someone who I knew on a deep subconscious level wouldn’t and couldn’t be with me. It was also easier for me to build someone else up and believe in them and cling to them and put them on a pedestal because I didn’t know how to do those things myself.

Unrequited love was addictive because it allowed me to experience all of those feelings and give my love to others, without any real risk or “unknown.”

It was a relief from having to deal with real connections, real situations, real rejection, and real relational circumstances.

It was easier and safer to love a projection than to deal with a flaw in my character (and the challenges of a reciprocal relationship with a real, non-fictional person).

The reason unrequited love is so addictive is the level of escape it provides. In my opinion, escape is the hardest “drug” to break. It is the root of addiction, and breaking addiction requires paying attention to a painful reality that can no longer be ignored.

How to Deal

It was really hard for me to deal with when I found myself having to come to terms with the reality of a one-sided situation because the story I believed no longer worked. It still hurts when I find myself falling back into that all-too-familiar dynamic of clinging to someone or something (a career opportunity, a desire for a family to be “supposed to be,” etc.) that is not reciprocated.

Dealing with unrequited love requires gentleness and compassion for yourself and love and compassion for yourself, and if you have an abundance of that love, you will never tolerate any kind of prejudice.

For me, the best way to deal with this love is to heal.

Healing begins with feeling all the shameful feelings associated with becoming something I don’t want to be (a clingy person).

It starts with taking a compassionate look at how some of my childhood traumas set me up to be drawn into hopeless and impossible situations where I tied my entire worth to someone who saw in me what I couldn’t see in myself. If you find yourself in situations of unrequited love, please know that there is nothing wrong with you. All you are doing is outsourcing the love, admiration, attention, and compassion you need to give to yourself.

The more you compassionately redirect and remind yourself of reality, the more self-respect and self-love you will build.

And the less interest you’ll have in one-sidedness.