Unrequited Love
In my personal experience, unrequited love is like death, only worse. Unrequited love occurs when the person you absolutely are “head over heels” in love with does not reciprocate the same desire and feelings. Can you think of anything more emotionally and spiritually painful than unrequited love?
Unrequited Love and Hope for Healing
At least in death a Christian single is done with pain. In unrequited love the pain just goes on and on. Sigh. If it’s really true love, the victim of unrequited love has a long process of working through the rejection, heartbreak and depression. Many singles who have been hurt in this way in the past also have to overcome fears of entering any future dating relationship.
One of the main things that helped me heal from unrequited love was remembering my Saviour also suffered from a form of unrequited love when he gave Himself on the cross. That’s why he can sympathize and empathize with us in this area. Can you imagine the pain the bore for us?
Bible Verse of Day
-He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him- John 1:11
I am going through this and it is extremely painful. It IS like dying and thanks for understanding about resenting the Bible being preached at you during times of intense distress.
After all, the Bible also applies to those other parties involved in this situation so how can I personalise it, in any way? Given they are happy and I am not, it seems the Bible applies even more so to them, as they are the ones who have experienced love, acceptance, fruition.
The complicating thing is that I thought he liked me and he gave me cause to believe he did with his conversation, body language and eye contact etc.
Dear Asha:
Thanks for your comment, and we are praying for the pain you are experiencing with unrequited love. I want to refer you to the life of Job. It looked bad in the outset…but God worked it out all for good in the end. Please hang on to Jesus during this trial…Keep in touch
David
I completely understand, I am going through it right now and some days, I’m ok and sometimes I am just so depressed about it. I am a young woman and I was raised to believe that if the man is interested in a woman, than HE’LL pursue her. Right?
Unrequited love does feel horrible. It feels like you’re dying. This has got to be one of the worst anybody can suffer. It feels worse than depression. Unfortunately, I’m going through it. When the object of your affection doesn’t feel the same way or doesn’t reciprocate your feelings it can tear you apart. I have never felt so miserable in my life. There are days when I feel fine but most of the time I feel intense sadness. It is so overwhelming. There are times when it seems I can’t function or I can’t go on. I remember when it was hard for me to concentrate at work and I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed. One day I felt so severely depressed I couldn’t even finish doing my hair and just went straight to bed. I realize it’s time for me to move on.
Unrequited love? I’m in this situation myself, she was one of my closest friends and it does hurt, and has for sometime now… but to equate this to the feelings of death or dying “only worse,” I think is, pardon my directness, ridiculous. If this is really how you feel, there might be some underlying issues and good, Christian counseling might be something to really consider.
The world is a pretty big place and people everywhere are really suffering, losing children and parents to sickness and disease, impoverished and just trying to survive, battling severe mental illnesses and being imprisoned simply for wanting to worship God, unrequited love to them would be a luxury of a problem…
Mike,
about unrequited love feelings, just because you don’t feel things as intensely as others does not mean that you are the correct standard and that others are wrong because they deviate from the way you react.
Different people and personality types differ greatly in the way they react to loss. For example, my mother committed suicide when I was five years old. Therefore, losses are harder for me than for many people. Yes, there are times I do feel like dying over my unrequited love. Because to me, a life without love is hardly worth living. It’s hard to keep going on doing things without a partner to share life with.
I am aware that others suffer greatly in other countries and here in the USA. However, that sometimes doesn’t help a lot when you live and work with mostly happily married people without those horrible circumstances!
I don’t think people’s feelings can be written off as “ridiculous”. To label them that way just adds to their pain. It’s like kicking a fellow soldier when they are down.
WHEN DOES IT STOP HURTING? WHEN WILL MY HEART REALIZE THAT IT’S TOO LATE FOR ANYTHING TO HAPPEN BETWEEN US? It’s been four years and I still can’t forget him. I try praying to turn my thoughts away from him and towards God, but it doesn’t work. I dream about him. As if it weren’t torturous enough for thoughts of him to invade my waking life, his effigy haunts my dreams.
Mark:
Unrequited love is experienced not only in singleness, but also in marriage. After 29 years of working at being a Christian husband who has tried to love his wife as Christ loves the Church I am still waiting for love to come back to me. There are many good and understandable reasons for my wife not being able to love, but my heart still hurts and longs for it. The way that I am working through it is to remember that I have turned wanting love into a god and that is idolatry. I trust God with the longing of my heart for genuine intimacy on every level and worship only Him. I will honor God with my life and my marriage whether or not I get what I need.