When you love someone, a profound and often overwhelming feeling takes hold. It’s a desire for connection, a yearning for reciprocation, and a hope for a shared future. But what happens when those feelings aren’t returned? Unrequited love, loving someone who doesn’t love you back, can be a deeply painful experience. It can leave you wishing you could turn off your emotions, stop caring, or erase the love altogether. The agony of loving someone who doesn’t feel the same is something many can imagine, even if they haven’t lived it.
It’s natural to seek ways to cope with unrequited love. People try various methods to move on from those who don’t return their affection. In literature, like George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, characters might consider drastic measures like fleeing to another country to escape the heartbreak. In real life, people might turn to distractions, seek solace in social activities, or receive well-meaning but often ineffective advice from friends. However, those who have truly experienced unrequited love understand a fundamental truth: simply wishing to stop loving someone doesn’t make it happen.
Why is it so difficult to just stop loving someone, even when it hurts? Because love, in its essence, isn’t always rational. The logic of “it would be better if I didn’t love them” doesn’t change the heart’s affections. Love operates on a different plane, one that isn’t easily swayed by practical considerations. But this situation isn’t entirely bleak. While unrequited love is undoubtedly bitter, it can become bittersweet if you shift your perspective. This article explores how to find a sense of acceptance and even value in the experience of loving someone who may not love you back.
Love can be categorized into different forms. Rational love is based on reasons – loving someone for their charm, kindness, or shared values. However, romantic love often transcends such logic. It’s more akin to what we can call arational love – love that isn’t solely justified by reason. Philosophers have long pondered the “problem of particularity” to understand this. If love were purely rational, based on traits like charm and attentiveness, why would we fixate on one particular person when many possess similar qualities? Why love this person and not another equally charming individual?
Some argue that the history of a relationship provides the rational basis for love. The shared experiences, the inside jokes, the journey together – these become the reasons to love a specific person. However, unrequited love challenges this idea. Love can spark at first sight, or grow for someone we barely know. If love can exist without a deep, established relationship, then the relationship itself can’t be the sole reason for the love.
Therefore, it’s compelling to consider romantic love as fundamentally arational. This means that even if moving on from unrequited love is the most sensible or pragmatic choice, reason alone won’t extinguish the feeling. Love isn’t a switch that can be flipped off with logic. As Shakespeare suggested, love can endure “even to the edge of doom.” Consider Sydney Carton in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. His love for Lucie Manette was unreturned, yet he sacrificed his life for her sake, taking the place of the man she did love. This illustrates the unconditional nature of romantic love, its persistence even in the face of impossibility.
If you’re experiencing unrequited love, understanding its arational and unconditional nature might initially bring more distress. If love can’t be reasoned away, how can you cope with the pain? But there’s a powerful shift in perspective to be found. While unrequited love can be intensely painful, it can also be seen as a profound and even “sublime” experience. This isn’t to diminish the hurt, but to suggest that this exquisite form of emotional experience is worth acknowledging and understanding. Instead of desperately wishing for the love to disappear, consider embracing it, for as long as it lasts. Embracing your love, even unrequited, can lessen the suffering it causes.
What does it mean to “embrace” unrequited love? While love itself is arational, our attitude towards it is something we can consciously shape. Rejecting your love creates an internal conflict – you love someone, but you judge that love as unwanted or negative. This internal rift amplifies the bitterness and pain. However, if you adopt an attitude of affirmation, you can find peace within yourself. Embracing unrequited love means acknowledging and accepting your feelings. Tell yourself, “I love this person, and that’s okay.”
You might worry that finding “reasons” to embrace unrequited love feels wrong, like trying to rationalize an irrational emotion. You might think that true acceptance requires genuinely believing it’s okay to be in love, not just telling yourself it is. Fortunately, there’s a compelling, non-prudential reason to embrace unrequited love: its sublime nature.
The capacity for arational love, even when it’s unrequited, is a remarkable aspect of being human. Despite our vulnerabilities, we are capable of immense, unconditional love, a feeling that touches upon the infinite and eternal. This resonates with Immanuel Kant’s concept of the mathematical sublime. Kant described the sublime as something that overwhelms our capacity for reason and sense, yet in that very overwhelming nature, reveals something profound about our human spirit. Our ability to feel something so vast, so powerful, beyond our control, “indicates a faculty … which surpasses every standard of sense.”
To love is to demonstrate a capacity that exceeds the limitations of both our senses and our reason. The depth of feeling we can experience is a testament to our humanity. Our relative helplessness in the face of love highlights what it means to be human. As W.H. Auden wrote, “If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me.” Love, in its immensity, is sublime because it gestures towards something beyond our full comprehension, something beyond the limits of our rational understanding.
We often try to rationalize love, to make it sensible and explainable. We seek reasons why we love, trying to fit it into a logical framework. But love often defies these attempts. It’s not a choice, yet it’s also not something that simply happens to us passively. There’s an inherent mystery in love, reflecting a deeper mystery about our own agency and selves. Exploring love, especially unrequited love, pushes us to the edges of our understanding of ourselves and our capacity for feeling. Love, in its sublime nature, offers a glimpse into something supersensible, something beyond the ordinary bounds of our experience.
In conclusion, love – including unrequited love – is an extraordinary human experience. It can withstand hardship, endure pain, and persist against all odds. Even when it pains you that your love is not returned, find solace in the fact that in loving, you are touching upon something sublime. This “edge” of human experience, though challenging, is not something to avoid. Instead, regard it with awe and recognize the profound capacity for love that it reveals within you. Whether reciprocated or not, romantic love is sublime and worthy of embrace because it reveals a unique and noble capacity within the lover. When you love someone, even if they don’t love you back in the same way, you are experiencing one of the most profound and meaningful aspects of being human.
