Way I see it, friendship and romantic love are two mostly-separate emotional imperatives, and it’s possible to shut one off without completely cutting off the other.
YMMV, and you may see the two as completely intertwined. To my mind, that means there was never any friendship there to begin with, in which case, disengage away.
As I recall, Pattie Boyd wasn’t “a friend whom you know will never love you back the same way” for Eric Clapton, since she eventually divorced George Harrison to marry Clapton. Didn’t work out that well, though.
What should you do? Move and lose their number and e-mail address.
Actually… you’re wrong about that. Oh, what you say seems completely logical, but you’re still wrong.
I have had two MAJOR cases of unrequited love in my life. There have been two women that I loved heart and soul but who never regarded me as anything but an interesting, amusing, quirky friend.
I have been married to someone else for 15 years now. I have had NO contact with one of those women in all that time. The other one is a casual Facebook friend who now lives in another state and whom I “talk” to online two or three times a year.
Have I fallen out of love with them? Well… no. Oh, I’ve moved on, I’ve long since stopped obsessing over them, and have not bothered them in the least. There is zero chance I’ll ever have any kind of romantic relationship with either, and there is zero chance I’ll ever even flirt with either again.
But if I ever ran into either of them in person, all the old feelings would still be there, on my part.
Now, IF I’d ever actually had a real relationship with either, I’m sure I WOULD have fallen out of love with them at some point. Day to day life has a way of crushing romance!
But since I’ve never actually had a relationship with them… well, I’ve never smelled their morning breath. We’ve never fought over money. We’ve never had to deal with each other’s annoying relatives.
It’s precisely BECAUSE we never had a relationship that, in some sense, they’re still perfect to me.
*Your hair ain’t curly and your doggone eyes ain’t blue
If you don’t want me, what in the world do I want with you?
*
Son House - “Walking Blues”
Well, if you’re my old roommate, you’ll move away but still be friends with me, then a few years later write me a letter saying that you’ve been deeply in love with me ever since we met about 10 years previous and that you can’t handle the fact that you’ll never “have my heart” and then you’ll not speak to me again for another 10 years, then you’ll out-of-the-blue Friend me on Facebook like everything is fine.
I kind of figured he had a thing for me but he never, ever made any move, verbally or physically, so I assumed that we had a happy platonic friendship. Guess not.
I’ve been on both sides of this, and I’m still friends with both women. In one case where I was the one with unrequired love, it didn’t actually start out that way, but due to a whole slew of complicated things that aren’t really relevant, we ended up where we were very close friends, I had strong feelings for her, and it wasn’t going to happen for a whole host of reasons. I tried to just move on normally, and it wasn’t working, so I had to actually just take a break from our friendship for a while. After a bit of a break from regular interaction, it helped me get perspective and I was able to reapproach out friendship without that. We’re still close.
On the other side, I had a good friend who had strong feelings for me and I just wasn’t interested in her that way. I was clear when it would come up, but eventually there too, it only really came to an end after we didn’t really interact for a while, she met someone else, and when we reconnected, she was over it, and I attended her wedding.
Now, I can’t say that would work for everyone, after all, the types of friendships I have tend to have periods with a lot of interaction and then periods of very little, sometimes even for years at a time, and when we reconnect, things are just fine. I really don’t know how it would operate for people that don’t have the ability to connect, disconnect, and reconnect like that. I guess eventually once you drive home that it just isn’t going to happen, stop pushing for it, and move on, the feelings will fade in time.
“Unrequired love”. Heh.
Sorry - not snarking on your story, Blaster Master.
Let’s look again at what you’re disagreeing with. This time, allow me to highlight a bit you might not have understood:
Just because you’re one of the exceptions (that are already accommodated in what I said) doesn’t make me wrong. It wasn’t a weasel-word, it was an acknowledgement of the statement not being absolute.
What does this mean?
Sorry astorian, my post above was unnecessarily dickish. There was no need for that - my apologies.
What’s really annoying is when they carefully explain their lack of feeling, then you maintain the friendship ( getting over / past it in the process. ) , and then they come around later with the feelings.
You can buy Aveeno skin lotion from Costco in bulk.
Ah, what’s the point of semi-anonymous message boards if we can’t be dickish occasionally? (Not like I’ve never been guilty.)
Let me steal one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite plays, Hugh Leonard’s Da.
“Time doesn’t mitigate an injury- it merely helps one to overlook it.”
My feelings for the aforementioned women haven’t disappeared. I just have enough other important things going on in my life that I no longer think about them nearly as often.
I can empathize with you. I wasted so much time and energy on people who were unavailable. :o If I could go back and talk to a younger me, Id’a told myself to get my head outta my ass and start living. It of course had much more to do with me and my own crap than the people I was fixated on. Really selfish, obsessive, craving sort of behavior, not real love at all. I’m not saying its easy, but swallow it, don’t act on it in any way, and move on. If you can remain friends wonderful, but its very easy to fool yourself about that kinda thing. Hang in there!
To repeat (AGAIN) my favorite analogy:
Hanging out with a woman who doesn’t love you in hopes that she’ll change her mind is like sitting in the front row at Yankee Stadium every night, hoping Joe Girardi will notice you and put YOU in the game.
It’s never going to happoen. Once you get that through your thick skull, there’s only one question: do you ENJOY going to the games, even knowing you’ll never get to play? Or is it making you miserable to sit there knowing it will never be YOU on the field?
If you still like the games, keep going. If it’s making you miserable, stop going. Forever.
It’s the same principle with your unrequited love goddess. Do you enjoy the time/lunches/small outings you have with her, or does it just frustrate you and drive you crazy? If it’s the former, just act like a grownup and see her occasionally. If it’s the latter, do yourself AND her a favor, and cut her off completely. Cold turkey. You’ll both be happier.
I think for some people, it doesnt work like that though, in fact, I suspect your story may be rather rare (and that was the intent of my ‘probably’).
I mean, I know it isn’t like that for everyone, because it isn’t like that for me. I was the unrequited lover more than once in the past, but I got over it.
Also, in terms of what must be going on inside the mind, I suspect there will be many similarities between being a rejected suitor and being dumped in a relationship - and people get over that, mostly.
I should probably qualify that. When I say I got over it, I mean that the feelings faded into the background until I reached the point where I was in control of them, not they in control of me.
I am still in touch with one of the women I fell for in that way, and I have no doubt that if the circumstances were right and favourable, I would be able to fan that dim ember back into a flame, but it would take an act of will to start the process, I think.
It’s the word “pathetic” I have a major problem with. It seems unkind, dismissive, and judgmental.