If you’ve ever poured your heart out to someone who doesn’t reciprocate those feelings, you understand the sharp sting of unrequited love. It’s a unique kind of heartache, a longing for a future that may never materialize. When love blossoms, the natural desire is for that love to be mirrored back. When it isn’t, the ache can be profound, leading us to wish we could simply switch off our emotions, erase our feelings, or even rewind time to before love took hold. Even if you haven’t navigated this specific emotional landscape, you can likely imagine the deep emotional turmoil it creates.
It’s no surprise that people seek out ways to alleviate the pain of loving someone who doesn’t love them back. Just as Rex Gascoigne in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda considered fleeing the country after rejection, we too might fantasize about drastic escapes. Perhaps a weekend of indulgence, or well-meaning friends setting us up on awkward dates. The advice, though kindly intended, often misses the mark. While these distractions might offer temporary respite from the immediate hurt, they don’t address the core issue: they don’t make us stop loving.
Why is it so difficult to simply stop loving when it’s causing pain? Because love, especially in its romantic form, often operates outside the realm of pure logic. Telling someone it would be “better” to move on, while pragmatically sound, doesn’t magically extinguish the flames of affection. Love, in many ways, is arational. But this isn’t entirely a bleak outlook. This article aims to shift your perspective on unrequited love, to see it not just as bitter, but as a bittersweet experience, a profound expression of your humanity.
Rational love, as opposed to arational love, is based on reasons – like Anna Karenina’s love for Count Vronsky, potentially fueled by his charm and attentiveness. Arational love, however, isn’t rooted in such logical justifications. The “problem of particularity” in the philosophy of love highlights this: if love were purely rational, based on traits like charm, why would we fixate on one charming person over countless others? Charm is not a unique commodity. Why Vronsky specifically?
If you are grappling with unrequited love, know that there are compelling reasons to view your situation with a different lens.
Philosopher Niko Kolodny and others argue that shared history provides the rational basis for love, solving the particularity problem. Vronsky met Anna at that specific train station in Moscow, a unique point of connection. However, unrequited love throws a wrench in this theory. Doesn’t unrequited love often ignite at first sight, or grow for someone we barely know? If love can exist without a reciprocal relationship, then the relationship itself can’t be the sole reason for the love.
This strengthens the argument for love being arational. Therefore, even if moving on seems “better” logically, this rational argument won’t simply make the love disappear. Love isn’t governed by practical reasons.
Some might argue that if love causes harm, that’s reason enough to stop. If unrequited love brings pain, shouldn’t that be a logical trigger to cease loving? Yet, again, love doesn’t always respond to reason, even when that reason is self-preservation. Shakespeare’s words resonate: “love someone ‘even to the edge of doom’.” Sydney Carton in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, deeply in love with Lucie Manette who loved another, exemplifies this. He sacrificed his life for her beloved. This illustrates the unconditional nature of romantic love, extending beyond the rational.
If you’re experiencing unrequited love and are convinced that it’s arational, unconditional, and resistant to rational solutions, you might feel a renewed wave of despair. But don’t lose heart. There are powerful reasons to embrace your situation. (This excludes abusive scenarios where love is manipulated.) Unrequited love can be intensely painful, but perhaps it’s a pain of a unique kind, a “sublime and exquisite torture.” And exquisite torture, arguably, is worth enduring. The unrequited lover shouldn’t be in a rush to end their love. Instead, consider embracing it for as long as it lasts. Embracing your love, even unreturned, can lessen its sting.
What does embracing love truly mean? While love itself may be arational, our attitude towards it is something we can consciously shape, and for good reasons. Rejecting our love creates internal conflict – we disapprove of our feelings, yet can’t control them. This internal battle contributes to bitterness. But if you adopt an attitude of affirmation, you can find peace within yourself. “Embracing” unrequited love means affirming it: tell yourself, “I am in love, and that is okay.”
You might worry that embracing unrequited love for prudential reasons is the “wrong kind” of reason. The idea of “It’s better for me to embrace my love” might not feel like a genuine motivation. You might believe that certain attitudes require genuine beliefs. Affirming your love might seem impossible if you don’t truly believe it’s “okay” to be in love. Fortunately, there’s a strong, non-prudential reason to embrace unrequited love: it’s sublime.
The arational and unconditional nature of love is something to celebrate. Fragile as we are, we are capable of this immense, arational love, the closest we may get to the infinite or eternal. This echoes Immanuel Kant’s concept of the mathematical sublime, though perhaps uniquely applied to romantic love. To paraphrase Kant, our capacity to feel something so immense, beyond reason and control, “indicates a faculty … which surpasses every standard of sense.”
To love is to demonstrate a capacity exceeding sensory and rational limits. The depth of our emotions is a quintessential expression of our humanity, and our vulnerability to these powerful feelings is perhaps the very essence of being human. As W.H. Auden wrote, “If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me.” If love is metaphorically mathematically sublime, it captures the idea of something beyond comprehension. The sublime, for Kant, is akin to peering over the edge of the phenomenal world, glimpsing something beyond our grasp.
Love is sublime because it points to something we can’t fully comprehend. We seek rational explanations for love, wanting it to be sensible. Yet, love defies logic. It’s not a choice, yet it’s something we do, not just something that happens to us. This inherent incomprehensibility reflects a deeper mystery about agency, even self-agency. Our experience and analysis of love might be the closest we get to understanding the self beyond practical reason. Love exists at the very edge of our agency’s comprehensibility. Love is sublime because it offers a glimpse into the supersensible realm.
In essence, love – including unrequited love – is extraordinary. It endures anger, pain, and grief, persisting against all odds, in unexpected places and times. While it may hurt that your love isn’t returned, find solace in this: in loving, you are looking over Kant’s edge. This edge, though daunting, shouldn’t be avoided. Instead, approach this precipice with awe and find joy in your proximity to it. This isn’t just a comforting platitude. Love, returned or unreturned, romantic or otherwise, is sublime and worthy of embrace because it reveals a unique and noble capacity within you, the lover.
