Route to unrequited love[edit]
According to Dr. Roy Baumeister, what makes a man or woman desirable, of course, is a complex
and highly personal mix of many qualities and traits. But falling for someone who is much more
desirable than oneself, whether because of physical beauty or attributes like charm, intelligence,
wit or status, Baumeister calls this kind of mismatch "prone to find their love unrequited" and that
such relationships are falling upward.[4] According to some psychologists, opposites do attract,
but it is not possible to attract those whose moral values are different.[5][6]
Unrequited love victims[edit]
The inability of the unrequited lover to express and fulfill emotional needs may lead to feelings
such as depression, low self-esteem, anxiety and rapid mood swings between depression and
euphoria.
Rejectors[edit]
'There are two dark sides to unrequited love, but only one is made familiar by our culture'[7] - that
of the lover, not the rejector. In fact, research suggests that the object of unrequited affection
experiences a variety of negative emotions on a par with those of the suitor, including anxiety,
frustration and guilt.[8] As Freud long since pointed out, 'when a woman sues for love, to reject
and refuse is a distressing part for a man to play',.[9]
Popular culture[edit]
Unrequited love has been a frequent subject in popular culture. Movies, books and songs often
portray the would-be lover's persistence as paying off when the rejector comes to his or her
senses. The presence of this script makes it easy to understand why an unrequited lover persists
in the face of rejection'.[10]
'Platonic friendships provide a fertile soil for unrequited love'.[11] Thus the object of unrequited
love is often a friend or acquaintance, someone regularly encountered in the workplace, during
the course of work, school or other activities involving large groups of people. This creates an
awkward situation in which the admirer has difficulty in expressing his/her true feelings, a fear that
revelation of feelings might invite rejection, cause embarrassment or might end all access to the
beloved, as a romantic relationship may be inconsistent with the existing association.
Advantages[edit]
Unrequited love has long been depicted as noble, an unselfish and stoic willingness to accept
suffering. Literary and artistic depictions of unrequited love may depend on assumptions of social
distance which have less relevance in democratic societies with relatively high social mobility, or
less rigid codes of sexual fidelity. Nonetheless, the literary record suggests a degree of euphoria
in the feelings associated with unrequited love, which has the advantage as well of carrying none
of the responsibilities of mutual relationships: certainly, 'rejection, apparent or real, may be the
catalyst for inspired literary creation..."the poetry of frustration"'.[12]
Eric Berne considered that 'the man who is loved by a woman is lucky indeed, but the one to be
envied is he who loves, however little he gets in return. How much greater is Dante gazing at
Beatrice than Beatrice walking by him in apparent disdain'.[13]
Remedies[edit]
Roman poet Ovid in his Remedia Amoris 'provides advice on how to overcome inappropriate or
unrequited love. The solutions offered include travel, teetotalism, bucolic pursuits and, ironically,
avoidance of love poets'.[14]
Dorothy Tennov (1979) has suggested that the only cure for being in love is to get indisputable
evidence that the target of one's love is not interested.[15]
Cultural analogues[edit]
In the wake of his real-life experiences with Maud Gonne, in a further twist, W. B. Yeats wrote of
those who 'had read/All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing/Returned and yet unrequited love'.
[16] According to Robert B. Pippin, Proust claimed that 'the only successful (sustainable) love is
unrequited love'.[17] According to Pippin, sometimes 'unrequited love...has been invoked as a
figure for the condition of modernity itself'.[18]
