Have you ever had strong feelings for someone who didn’t feel the same way about you? That wistful, heartbreaking experience is sometimes called unrequited love—but is it the same as real love?
Unrequited love is love that is not mutual or reciprocated; one person loves someone who does not love them back. The word requite literally means to return or to repay. The term unrequited love, in particular, carries an intentionally dramatic or romantic connotation to it, in part because the phrase appears so often throughout classic literature and poetry and continues to be a popular theme in books, movies, and music today.
Of course, unrequited love does happen in real life as well. “While it commonly occurs between a person who falls in love with someone that is physically or emotionally unavailable, it can also occur between two friends that share a deep level of intimacy,” licensed marriage and family therapist Weena Cullins, LCMFT, tells mbg. “One friend’s feelings may shift from platonic to romantic while the other friend’s feelings remain compartmentalized.”
Unrequited love can be deeply painful for the person who’s in love, in part because it often means they will not get to share life with this person as fully or deeply as they’d want. The lack of reciprocity may also feel like a rejection or condemnation of their worth.
That said, according to couples therapist Alicia Muñoz, LPC, some people may actually enjoy the sense of drama and drive that unrequited love may bring to their life. “Although unrequited love gets a bad rap, it can actually be thrilling and addictive. Even when it’s emotionally painful to want someone who is out of reach or who doesn’t respond to you, unrequited love can heighten your sense of self through the painful dramas it creates.”
Wanting something so desperately can make a person feel alive or like a hero in an epic love story—so much so that they intentionally lean into the feelings and the valorizing narrative of unrequited love. It makes for a very complex experience.
Examples of unrequited love.
Falling in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same way
Developing romantic feelings for a friend who only sees you as a friend
Wanting to be with someone who’s already in another relationship
Wanting to be with someone you can’t be with for some reason (ex. they live far away, you work together, etc.)
Wanting to get back together with an ex who has moved on
Developing strong romantic feelings for a famous person or celebrity
Usually a person knows when they’re experiencing unrequited love: You have romantic feelings for someone who you’re not romantically involved with and who you know likely doesn’t have the same feelings for you. But in some situations, perhaps you’re receiving mixed signals from the object of your affection and can’t actually tell whether the feelings are mutual or not.
According to Cullins, here are a few signs to look for that indicate you’re not on the same page:
1. They’re actively maintaining distance from you.
If the person you like maintains firm boundaries whenever you try to express your feelings for them, Cullins says that’s a sign your love is likely not reciprocated. “For example, if you suggest that you and your love interest go on a formal date or spend intimate time alone, they may repeatedly decline or suggest activities that don’t foster a romantic connection.”
Pay attention to their body language when you’re around them and how they respond when you indicate that you like them and want to get to know them better. If they don’t seem eager to spend time together and get closer to you, they probably don’t feel the same way you do.
2. They make themselves romantically available for others but not for you.
Do they talk about how much they want to be in a relationship but then dodge the topic when you mention you’re interested? That’s probably not a good sign, says Cullins. “If they express an openness to meeting new people and/or dating after you’ve clearly expressed a romantic interest in them, this may be an indicator that your love is unrequited.”
3. Your efforts feel unbalanced in the relationship.
Pay attention to whether they’re putting in as much time, energy, attention, and care into the relationship as you are, Cullins suggests. “If you find yourself consistently considering your love interest first but seeing signs that they don’t consider you nearly as much, that may be an indicator of unrequited love.”
A person who likes you will put active effort into building a connection with you. If the relationship is more one-sided, it may be because the other person’s feelings just aren’t there.
Is unrequited love really love?
“Languishing in a state of unrequited love makes for high drama in literature and movies. But unrequited love isn’t love,” Muñoz says.
The thing about unrequited love is that people most often experience it toward someone they don’t actually know that well or someone who hasn’t actually opened up to them fully. So in some ways, unrequited love may be closer to infatuation than real love in most situations.
“It will often masquerade as love, though, for people who feel incomplete, which many of us do at different points in our lives. When we feel incomplete, it’s tempting to fall for an idealized ‘other.’ We imagine this successful, wise, attractive, famous, powerful, or talented person will complete us and help us feel whole—if only they’d love us back,” Muñoz explains.
Perhaps unrequited love is better defined simply as longing—longing for someone so desperately that it feels like love, even when it’s not.
What causes unrequited love?
According to Muñoz, unrequited love may have more to do with a person’s own inner challenges than with the love interest they’re so attached to.
“Unrequited love happens when we project our own disowned traits or potential onto another person, idealize that person, and then languish because that person doesn’t reciprocate our feelings,” she explains. “In this way, we remain caught up in a simplified ‘love’ drama that absolves us of the need to embrace ourselves with both our positive and negative aspects—or to embrace another person with all of their positive and negative aspects. Instead, we come to view another person as our holy grail.”
In some ways, unrequited love can also be an easy way out—a way to avoid the challenges of real love, according to Muñoz.
“The external drama we create through indulging in unrequited love for prolonged periods of time saves us from the messiness and disappointment of cultivating real love and loving a real person rather than a fantasy or a projection. Sometimes it even protects us from processing traumas we’ve experienced in past relationships that we don’t want to face,” she explains.
“Real love is about facing hard truths about ourselves and others with compassion, cultivating connection, and overcoming challenges as a team. Real love involves risk, vulnerability, and courage. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is a way of controlling the narrative by avoiding the unpredictability of real love, and the maturity real love requires.”
While unrequited love can hurt quite badly, the experience itself is not inherently unhealthy or bad. After all, people can’t control the way they feel or how much they like someone.
“Unrequited love isn’t bad,” Muñoz says. “Most people experience it at some point or another, especially in their teens and twenties when they’re exploring relationships, eroticism, and romance. But when unrequited love becomes a pattern—or when you remain mired in a state of experiencing unrequited love for someone in a way that affects the quality of your life—then it may be time to look at the function and cost of falling in love with people who don’t love you back.”
People can sometimes lean on unrequited love as a way of avoiding taking responsibility for ourselves and for our own happiness, Muñoz points out. “We chase the illusion of this elusive idealized other, telling ourselves that if only they loved us, we’d be fulfilled. This can keep us living in a childlike mindset where we avoid responsibility by believing we’ll be rescued, magic will happen, and we’ll feel happy, worthy, or whole with little effort invested on our part.”
All that said, there are certainly healthier ways to experience love that isn’t returned. It’s possible to love someone and simply not be concerned with whether they love you back. You can love someone from afar, admiring them, wanting the best for them, and caring for them in the ways you can, without asking anything from them in return. There’s an old quote thought be by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that puts this type of selfless love into perspective: If I love you, what business is it of yours?
The key here, of course, is to make sure that this love doesn’t impede on your well-being—and your ability to form mutual loving connections with others.
How to deal with unrequited love.
While you don’t necessarily need to force yourself to stop liking this person as much as you do, it can help a great deal to shift your perspective away from trying to get them to feel the same way about you. Can you love this person without asking anything from them in return—and truly be okay with that?
However, if you’re dealing with unrequited love that’s painful, detracting from your well-being, or involves someone else taking advantage of your feelings, it may be necessary for you to figure out how to get over this person—at least enough so that you’re able to feel more emotionally stable and grounded.
To do this, Cullins recommends resetting your boundaries with this person. “This could look like deciding to consider yourself first, only making time for them after they’ve made time for you, or not giving them their way in hopes that their feelings will eventually match yours. Doing this will allow you to notice how unequal your feelings and efforts are and may help you walk away from the mismatch for good.”
If you’re really struggling to let go, you may need to temporarily take a break from being around this person or at least limit how often you interact with them as much as possible, she adds. “It is difficult to get control of intense feelings for someone if you are interacting with them on a regular basis.”
In the meantime, find positive ways to occupy your time, she suggests. That could mean diving headfirst into a new project, habit, or long-term goal to focus your energy and attention on.
Unrequited love is an intense romantic longing for someone who doesn’t feel the same way about you, and it’s often more closely related to infatuation than real love. While it’s a common experience that many people may go through at some point in their lives, pay attention to if unrequited love is a frequent pattern for you and why that might be—and if it’s negatively impacting your well-being.
If so, ask yourself: Why are you allowing yourself to become so absorbed in another person who isn’t returning that interest in you? What habits or beliefs are allowing you to find yourself in this situation time and time again? What do you gain—or get to hide from—by choosing to chase unavailable people?
