Blogpost #2: Unrequited Love

                   It is common to have romantic feelings to someone who does not feel the same way about you. This is because we all have our tendencies to produce feelings for another person without the assurance of that so called “love” being returned to us. But why do you think people still pursue the guy or girl they are in love with even though the latter does not feel the same way about them? These are the factors why we keep our hopes up for these people: First is, because of the hope that the other person may love us back. There is really nothing wrong with hoping that the person may love you back after knowing that you have feelings for him but it is not right either to spend so much time thinking about something you want to happen without assurance. Second is, because the other person shows mixed signals. Sometimes we think twice about forgetting a person we love, but then, their actions draw us closer to them even though we are not sure about how they feel towards us. It may sometimes seem that they like us back, but then we misinterpret their actions; thinking that what they show is affection but turns out to be just gestures of friendship. Last but not the least is, because we tend to make ourselves fools for the ones we love and do everything for them. When it comes to love, even smart people become dumb because we think that we should and can do anything for the person we love even though it may hurt us in the end. I guess that is the consequence of love, doing everything to the point that we become fools.

This situation is what we call ‘unrequited love.’ The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines unrequited as ‘not reciprocated or returned in kind’ and love as ‘strong feeling of affection.’ It is hopelessly loving a person whom we can never have a chance with and is the most unbearable and greatest kind of pain that comes along with love; and when you've done everything to win them then they would still choose someone over you, that hurts more.

According to the article “Unrequited 500 Days of Summer” written by rebzombie, one example of unrequited love is what happened in the movie 500 Days of Summer. In this movie, the main character, Tom Hansen, falls in love with Summer Finn. They become friends and eventually Tom develops feelings for her; but then Summer tells him that she is not looking for anything serious, and Tom agrees. Later on, Tom finds himself falling further in love with Summer but one day, Summer just tells him that they should stop seeing each other. This breaks Tom’s heart and soon, both his life and career fall apart.

As he goes on with his brokenhearted life, he sees Summer in a bus he is riding and discovers that she is going to the same party he is. After being close to Summer again and dancing with her, he thinks that he still has a chance. Summer invites him over to her house the following week, and Tom expects a lot of things that did not happen the way he wanted. Later that afternoon, he sees that Summer is actually wearing an engagement ring, and disappointedly leaves.

After being hurt and finding time to fix himself again, he sees Summer on their favorite spot, overlooking the city. He confronts her, saying “You didn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend, and now you’re somebody’s wife.” Then Summer says that now she’s sure with the feelings that she was never sure of with Tom. They part ways and Tom tells Summer that he really hopes she is happy.

One day, when Tom was about to apply for a new job, he meets a girl of his competition for the position. He learns that she has the same favorite spot as him, and that she has seen him before when he was not looking. He asks for her name and she introduces herself as ‘Autumn.’ Tom then invites her for coffee after the job interview.

It is difficult to deal with unrequited love because every time you think about him/her, the feeling comes rushing back like the first time you were rejected. Now that we know how hard unrequited love is, these are some ways to deal with the situation if you are the victim of unrequited love from the article “How to Deal with Unrequited Love” edited by Feliiiii, DifuWu, Krystle, ElizabethD and 23 others in Wiki How: First way is to accept that romantic love is not usually a conscious decision. You cannot force someone to love you if the feelings itself aren’t there. It is like insisting on riding a train when there really is no space left. Second way is to eradicate any sense of neediness. Conveying neediness just lessens your value as a person. Try to think happy and positive thoughts and focus on yourself more. Third way is to distance yourself. As much as possible, try to lessen or totally cut the communication off between you and the other person. The more you still talk to him/her more, the more your feelings are likely to come back again, thus you will get hurt again once you are reminded that he/she does not like you back. The last way is to practice unconditional love. Perhaps you can feel happy for the person even if he/she can be happy without you in his/her life. That’s unconditional love, feeling happiness from giving, not receiving.

The burden is too much to bear that we must stop chasing an elusive dream and might as well move on. Moving on may be hard at first, but once you get through it, you will soon realize that the pain is worth it. You have become a better and much stronger person.