by Darrin A Yarbrough

Created on: January 21, 2011   Last Updated: January 22, 2011

Unrequited love is experiencing romantic feelings for someone who does not return them. Everyone at some point experiences affections that are not reciprocated. Understanding this situation can be very difficult.

One thing that will help overcome the experience recognizes the differences between love and other feelings. Normal healthy love is more like a description of behavior rather than a feeling. Love usually develops over long periods of time.

Immediate feelings that seem overwhelming or pressing in one’s mind are rarely actual expressions of love. Instead, they are elements of attraction excited by hormones released within the body. These hormones or chemicals are both important and necessary elements that enable attraction to occur.

The mind is incapable of making the distinction between reality and what a person imagines to be real. This does not mean what one experiences is not real. In fact, what one’s mind experience’s is real although it is not reality in actuality. This is because we choose to represent our experiences framing them emotionally after we interpret them. Human beings therefore, respond to their emotions not reality.

Understanding this helps to develop a sense of perspective regarding unrequited love. These feelings have nothing to do with the object of one’s affection. Instead, they have everything to do with what a person chooses to tell themselves about the experience.

In order to overcome the sense of loss stemming from unreciprocated affections, one need only change the meaning of the event in one’s own mind. While at first, this may seem easier said than done, consistently reframing the event will eventually assist in making feelings subside.

There are three basic components to relationships, one, attraction, two, selection, and three, sustainability. First and foremost, attraction is the most common. Take any two people of the opposite sex, place them on a deserted island and attraction will eventually occur. Therefore, attraction is most likely a common element in any requited or unrequited love.

Problems arise when the secondary element, selection is evaluated. This element involves similarities or differences in nature, values, goals, objectives, and beliefs. These elements are key distinctions that will inevitably result in happiness, mutual fulfillment, or pain and heartache.

One way to avoid painful disappointment in relationships is to clearly identify the elements one needs for happiness

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