Not necessarily. It’s only obsession if it has the characteristics of obsession. Loving without expectation of return is, after all, the definition of selfless love. Of course, you have to distinguish between love and infatuation but it is quite possible to love unrequitedly without it being obsession.
Uh… no. "
I have loved someone who couldn’t love me back. (Fell hopelessly for a girl who was just perfect, but she would never be interested in the likes of me, what with her being a lesbian and all.) I certainly wasn’t obsessed though. “Obsession” is a persistent, unreasonable, preoccupation that disturbs one’s daily routine. That’s the kind of stuff that leads to stalking.
Unrequited love is no where near so pathological. It’s the path to great disapopointment and heartache, but it shouldn’t be governing everything you think about the way obsession dominates your brain.
selfless love and all that is fine for your kids, pets, students, parishoners, etc.
I think the OP is about romantic love.
Romantically loving someone (which I think should include exclusivity just as per requited love) that you know for a fact (that is, with absolutely no hope, otherwise you are just a romantic and good for you) will never requite your love, amounts to not loving yourself enough to realize that you are closing yourself to the possibility of better relationships.
I had my impossible love (she wanted to be a nun, I was just coming out the seminary). I wasn’t self-destructive or criminal in any way but now, in retrospect and having a mutual relationship with my wife, I realize that during that time where I shut myself from other relationships and experiences that would have been better for me if I hadn’t been “waiting” for her (knowing that it would never be).
Of course, I could now argue that if I hadn’t been waiting for that unrequited love, I wouldn’t have been available for when I met Mrs Sapo, but that’s just the proverbial 20/20ness of hindsight.
**Is it possible to love someone without them loving you back? **
It depends how sleepy they are.
:Groan:
Not only is unrequited love possible and painful, in the Middle Ages and among some members of the SCA, it’s seen as the ideal. To love purely and chastely some unobtainable person was a mark of how noble and self-sacrificing one’s character was (“Or how much of a damn fool one was!” says the peasant).
Mind you, I still don’t recommend it.
When I look back on previous relationships that I thought were love, very often I realize that they weren’t. Lust, infatuation, delusion, yes. The only ones that were really love are the ones that still are. I’m friends with both of those guys to this day, 10+ years later. The rest? Maybe they really loved me. I doubt it, though. Love is the word we think we have to use in those contexts because it’s expected, and because we kid ourselves. Being in love justifies all kinds of wild, insane, irrational, and downright bad behaviors.
I guess I wish use of this word could be more restricted. Many wrongs are committed on the self and others under the banner of LOVE. This is a conclusion I’ve come to later in life, having misused the word many times. I can only hope I’m using it correctly now… at least it’s mutual.
It took my brother less than half an hour to fall in love with this girl.
It took her girlfriends less than a saturday afternoon to figure out he was in love with her.
It took five months until she was able to have a conversation about “boyfriends” without getting the fits because “college is first!”
If he hadn’t had the brains and patience to change her mind before asking for her heart, I wouldn’t have The Nephew now.
Oh yes ,and its a pretty gutting experience.
It’s possible to feel just about anything. Also, there are about 1,137 different emotions that people experience and call “love”, and perhaps the only one of them that I think it’s **not ** possible to experience *without * mutuality is that easy comfort and companiability of the long-coupled.
Of course, how genuine your “love” for someone is can only be measured by how well you actually know that person, in my opinion. So you can be in love with your friend, and the fact that he or she doesn’t return your feelings doesn’t invalidate that.
You can’t be in love with that girl you see at the coffee shop every day. You can like her, and be interested in her, and be wildly attracted to her, but you’re not in love with her.
In my case, it’s all I do. If I actually was attracted to someone who was available and might love me back, I’d be freaked out and run away with a knot in my stomach.
You could argue that unrequited crushes precisely because the other person is unavailable don’t count as love, though. And you’d probably be right.
I guess this YouTube clip (Japanese, subtitled) is appropriate to this thread: