How do you describe love? Is it that tingling feeling in your stomach which makes it feel like butterflies are flying when you see a certain person? True meaning of love is when your affection isn’t backed by any condition. When you love someone selflessly, you wouldn’t expect anything in return except for them to return the love and affection that you gave.
Unrequited love is one sided love, when you basically get friend-zoned or bro-zoned by someone that you start to develop feelings for, which has to hurt probably a lot more than expected. It’s complicated and love hurts but when you’re the only one in love, it hurts twice as much.
How does one deal with a broken heart and get over it? Well, the first thing you need to do is to accept the rejection. Rejection hurts, it’s pretty harsh at times, but the only way to move on is to accept the reality. In a study of more than 200 incidents of unrequited love, Baumeister found that rejecters suffered from guilt and anxiety and often reported feeling like they were victims. Baumeister reports that many of the pursued said things like, “I never hurt anyone before” and talked about how awful it made them feel to know that they were doing it now. Acknowledge what has happened and realize the fact that the world is designed in such a way where you will not always get what you want. The first step to getting over something is acceptance and acknowledging it.
The next step would be grieving. Humans are made up of emotions and holding them inside you won’t help you out a lot. It’s okay to be sad and unhappy because life has many different aspects and stages. Some may not be happy but what matters is that every stage makes you even stronger. Also acknowledge the fact that you can’t force someone to fall in love with you. No matter what you say or do, true love isn’t something that you can force onto someone.
Lastly, don’t blame yourself. If something didn’t work out that doesn’t always mean that you’re at fault. Evaluate your actions and try to learn from your mistakes rather than blaming yourself. One does suddenly feel worthless if something like this happens but in such difficult times, do not forget your self-respect and who you are as a person, your thoughts may be influenced by the pain and guilt at that moment so try to steer clear of such thoughts by not focusing on them.
Take it as a lesson and understand that life is unexpected. When you stop expecting things from people or life in general, life somewhat gets easier because when you have no expectations to be fulfilled, you won’t really get hurt if people do not come up to those expectations. Life keeps changing and twisting, take every day as an adventure and if it’s taking a toll on your mental health then please speak to someone and try getting help from a professional.
