Unrequited love - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Unrequited love - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Unrequited love or one-sided love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep and strong romantic affections. The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines unrequited as "not reciprocated or returned in kind."

Psychiatrist Eric Berne states in his book "Sex in Human Loving" that "Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner." Others, however, like the philosopher Nietzsche, considered that "indispensable...to the lover is his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference."

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.

 

'There are two dark sides to unrequited love, but only one is made familiar by our culture' - 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. 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', and vice versa.

'Platonic friendships provide a fertile soil for unrequited love'. 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.

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"'.

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.

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.

Erotomania

Erotomania is a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger, high-status or famous person, is in love with him or her. The illness often occurs during psychosis, especially in patients with schizophrenia, delusional disorder or bipolar mania.   During an erotomanic episode, the patient believes that a secret admirer is declaring his or her affection to the patient, often by special glances, signals, telepathy, or messages through the media. Usually the patient then returns the perceived affection by means of letters, phone calls, gifts, and visits to the unwitting recipient. Even though these advances are unexpected and often unwanted, any denial of affection by the object of this delusional love is dismissed by the patient as a ploy to conceal the forbidden love from the rest of the world.

The term erotomania is often confused with obsessive love, obsession with unrequited love, or hypersexuality. Obsessive love is not erotomania by definition.

 The core symptom of the disorder is that the sufferer holds an unshakable belief that another person is secretly in love with him or her. In some cases, the sufferer may believe several people at once are "secret admirers." The sufferer may also experience other types of delusions concurrently with erotomania, such as delusions of reference, wherein the perceived admirer secretly communicates his or her love by subtle methods such as body posture, arrangement of household objects, and other seemingly innocuous acts. Erotomanic delusions are typically found as the primary symptom of a delusional disorder or in the context of schizophrenia and may be treated with atypical antipsychotics.