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Unrequited love |
| Part of a series on Love |
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| Basic Aspects |
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| Love |
| Love (scientific views) |
| Love (virtue) |
| Love (cultural views) |
| Human bonding |
| Historically |
| Courtly love |
| Religious love |
| Types of emotion |
| Erotic love |
| Platonic love |
| Familial love |
| Romantic love |
| See also |
| Unrequited love |
| Problem of love |
| Interpersonal relationship |
| Sexuality |
| Sexual intercourse |
| Cultural views of love |
| Valentine's Day |
Unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may not even be aware of their admirer's deep affections.
This can lead to feelings such as depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and rapid mood swings between depression and euphoria. Being such a universal feeling, it has naturally been a frequent subject in popular culture.
Despite the case of the beloved not knowing their admirer's deep affections, it is common that the subject of unrequited love is a close friend. This creates an awkward situation in which the admirer has difficulty in expressing his/her feelings.
Different views exist on the subject of unrequited love, modern culture does not support the nobility of suffering for love, and the advice from most people would be to move on. However, novels such as Love in the Time of Cholera depict unrequited love as a disease, yet something which is pure and noble. For unrequited love's euphoria is still something to be desired.
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Unrequited love can fall into many categories, usually it occurs between friends or acquaintances, in modern times it is rare for unrequited love to stem from strangers that have never met. When unrequited love occurs between friends, it usually ends up in tragedy. Ignoring the situation where unrequited love is eventually reciprocated, in most cases the admirer will destroy the friendship if he or she professes true feelings.
In many examples the admirer is torn between maintaining the friendship, so that he or she may be close to the beloved, or revealing true feelings, thus destroying the friendship. Usually, the outcome is the destruction of the relationship, as the beloved does not want to continue leading on the admirer. However, there is a multitude of endings, and less scrupulous beloved may continue the friendship, which may result in awkward moments.
The choice for the beloved is limited, to destroy the friendship or acquaintance is the quickest resolution. Nevertheless, many people see it as cruel, and may not have the courage to end such relations. The beloved can choose to continue the friendship, this means that every move will be interpreted by the admirer as above and beyond friendship.
This creates a mismatch in intentions, the beloved merely enjoys spending time with the admirer as friends, whereas the admirer dotes over his or her beloved. Such mismatch can only lead to more awkwardness. Thus, there is no happy ending for unrequited love. This is especially true of close friends, where usually the destruction of the friendship may not happen, instead condemning both players to extreme awkwardness and unfulfilled desires.
At extreme ends, friends can even become enemies when one party reveals his or her true feelings. It is not uncommon for the admirer to become wrathful and vindictive once the rejection has been spelt out.
Despite the negatives of unrequited love, there are elements of nobility. For the admirer, if true in his or her love, is willing to sacrifice everything for the beloved, then there is a sense of true love, albeit not reciprocated. If the admirer can reach the zenith of unrequited love, it is arguable that they will eventually be "happy" for their beloved, even if they can never be together.
Although the emotional pain is ever present, the admirer has reached a point where there is only pure love, and thus will be willing to accept the choices of their beloved. The argument that the admirer is happy if the beloved is happy is a compelling one, in favour of showing the true nobility of unrequited love. Ultimately, it is rare that anyone can attain this state, as it means that the admirer knows full well that their love will never be reciprocated.
Unrequited love also questions whether friends from either genders can maintain platonic relationships. Although this is a topic on a tangent, it is often the case that unrequited love stems from friendship circles. In modern society this is especially painful, as frequent get togethers cause much awkwardness and false hope.
The length of unrequited love can stretch on for years; it is different to that of Puppy love. It is not uncommon for unrequited love to last for more than seven or more years, eventually stretching into decades. The admirer may even say that the love is eternal. Indeed, Beethoven coined the term immortal beloved as a testament to enduring unrequited love.
The origin of unrequited love can usually be attributed to a mismatch in perceptions and expectations. Clear communication early on almost always preempts unrequited love. All human communication is based on symbols, and being conventional, by their very essence symbols are prone to misunderstanding.
It is worthwhile to note that often the admirer will make assumptions about the way they are perceived by the beloved. These assumptions can make open communication almost impossible and will completely undermine any kind of relationship.
Examples of situations where unrequited love might arise
Missed opportunity:
If appropriate action was not taken while the opportunity for a relationship remained viable. Usually caused by the admirer's assumptions about the perceptions or expectations of the beloved. The admirer was so convinced of their own inadequacy that the fear of communicating with the beloved became paralyzing. This situation often leads to long-term regret, which exacerbates the emotional load for the admirer.
Failed relationship:
If communication and expectations within a relationship are mishandled one of the lovers may prefer to abandon the relationship while the other may continue to harbor expectations (however slight) of a future together. This is a very common outcome of a break-up. The ex-lover/beloved will likely have gone through the grieving process prior to the break-up, while the ex-lover/admirer will likely only start it at the time of the break-up and may be unwilling to progress through it.
Stalking behavior:
If the admirer perceives small gestures to be laden with hidden meaning the admirer might develop expectations that are completely different from the beloved's. Gestures such as the beloved's smile, tone of voice, or incidental touching. Additionally almost any kind of unrequited love has the potential to evolve into stalking behavior; care should be taken to respect the legal rights of the beloved at all times.
Layla and Majnun is Nezami's tale about a moon-princess who is married off by her father to someone other than the man who was desperately in love with her, Qais Ibn Al Mulawah, who wrote poetry generally about love and her name was mentoned in many of his poems, resulting in the man's madness. This story, along with complex occurrences in the personal lives of Eric Clapton and George Harrison, was an inspiration for Clapton's song "Layla", as well as Isreal Goldbergstein's infamous poem Unrequited love, candomble, and Santo Daime.
The 1st century BC Roman poet Catullus wrote about his unrequited love for Lesbia (Clodia) in several of his Carmina.
Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Little Mermaid (1836) tells the tragic story of a little mermaid who sacrifices the immortal life of a merperson in order to become human and gain the love of a prince she had saved from a shipwreck. The prince, however, falls in love with and marries another princess, mistakenly believing she had saved him. In despair, the little mermaid throws herself into the sea and turns into foam.
Abraham Cowley wrote of the emotion (in "Anacreontiques: Or, Some Copies of Verses Translated Paraphrastically out of Anacreon"):
Robert Burns' poem "Anna, Thy Charms" catches it succinctly:
Dante Alighieri for Beatrice Portinari - Perhaps the most famous example in Western culture of unrequited love. Dante apparently spoke to Beatrice only twice in his life, the first time when he was nine years old and she was eight. Although both went on to marry other people, Dante nevertheless regarded Beatrice as the great love of his life and his "muse". He made her the guide to Heaven in his work The Divine Comedy. Additionally, all of the examples in Dante's manual for poets, La Vita Nuova, are about his love for Beatrice. The prose which surrounds the examples further tells the story of his lifelong devotion to her. Similarly, the fictional writer Lemony Snicket also has an unrequited passion by a Beatrice.
Petrarch is famous for his love for the lady Laura. He is best remembered for the sonnets he wrote her, despite her marriage to another man. Indeed, the sonnet form later became related to the idea of unrequited love, among other themes. Petrarch is directly responsible for this association.
Unrequited love is present in all of Jane Austen's novels. Both Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet feel their love is unrequited at some point during Pride and Prejudice. In Mansfield Park Fanny Price suffers from a particularly drawn out case of unrequited love. It is also present in Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility. Generally, however, it is discovered by the end of the book that the love is actually requited and the two characters live happily ever after.
A.E. Housman wrote a poem inspired by his life-long unrequited love for his best friend Moses Jackson:
Don Quixote and Dulcinea in Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote, who believes he is a knight, imagines that he serves a noblewoman named Dulcinea. Unfortunately, the object of his desire is actually a homely peasant in his hometown, and his love for her is not returned. Her name has come to be a metaphor for unrequited love, in the sense, "That woman is my Dulcinea."
Shakespeare touched on the topic, in his plays Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night.
The classic French play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, is about a brilliant swordsman and poet who is in unrequited love with his cousin for decades.
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an early example of romanticism. Unrequited love combines two main themes in romanticism: Weltschmerz and love.
Gaston Leroux's character Erik from The Phantom of the Opera, who was born hideously deformed (said to have looked like a 'Living Corpse') and yet who falls for the young soprano Christine Daaé who, it turns out, also loves another man—the Viscount Raoul de Chagny. In the horror film version of the same title, the phantom kills both the object of his affection and her lover, before perishing in flames (symbolic of the feeling of being in the Hell of unsatisfied passion).
Victor Hugo's character Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame falls in love with Esmeralda, a beautiful, French gypsy girl, despite being an archdeacon, and therefore celibate. However, Esmeralda is repulsed by the archdeacon and his advances, and instead falls in love with Captain Phoebus, the Captain of the King's Archers. Frollo however, only seems to become more infatuated with her. He soon loses his self-control, and attempts to kill her conceited lover Phoebus, and kisses her while she faints. He even stabs himself at the sight of her torture, and attempts to rape her while she is in the church.
In Les Misérables, also by Victor Hugo, the character Éponine suffers from unrequited love for Marius, who is in love with Cosette. This becomes an important point in the plot when Éponine throws herself in front of a bullet to protect the object of her affections, ultimately killing herself for him.
Stendhal writes in a more clinical manner in On Love and in The Red and the Black, where the main character (a young Church man) becomes almost obsessed with his female counterpart, eventually trying to murder her.
Unrequited love is the most potent theme in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, manifested mostly in the character of Pip and his affections for Estella. Another Dickensian character who famously suffers from unrequited love is Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities.
The Slovene poet France Prešeren wrote a devastatingly beautiful sonnet cycle dedicated to his unhappy love for Julija Primic.
In Russian literature, among innumerable examples, one could mention First Love, by Turgenev or The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, in which several characters have unrequited feelings for others.
T. S. Eliot writes of the unrequited love of Prufrock
F. Scott Fitzgerald offers his ideas on unrequited love in The Great Gatsby, wherein the main character Jay Gatsby builds wealth through alcohol smuggling during prohibition to try and lure back his one time lover Daisy Buchanan. He wastes his youth throwing lavish parties at his house in the hope that one day she will attend. This is an example of how a person can build his whole life around someone who cares little or not at all for him. However her shallowness, while allowing physical consummation, does not provide the emotional security that Gatsby is seeking.
The character Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is depicted as a man suffering from varying extents of unrequited love in his complex relationship with Catherine Earnshaw.
Carl Sandburg treats the theme of unrequited love with minimalist elegance in poems from his 1963 book, Honey and Salt. In the poem, "Little Word, Little White Bird", the narrator asks, "Love, can it hit one without hitting two and leave the one lost and groping?" And in the poem, Offering and Rebuff (also from Honey and Salt), the rebuffer says to the one professing his love, "Let your heart look on white sea spray and be lonely... Love is a fool star."citation needed
Charles Schulz; his Peanuts character Charlie Brown suffers from unrequited love for the Little Red-Haired Girl, as does Lucy van Pelt for Schroeder, Sally Brown for Linus van Pelt, and Linus for his teacher Ms. Othmar (later on a girl in his class, Lydia). Charlie Brown famously notes in one stripcitation needed:
In William Somerset Maugham's novel, Of Human Bondage- The main character Philip Carey becomes enticed by a woman named Mildred, who does not care an ounce for Philip. He becomes masochistic, willing to put himself in the line of pain to gain Mildred's affection. In the end, he realizes that this is a one-sided love and that he is controlled by his own passions.
The Bible; The Wife of Potiphar. A great representation of the story is at the Getty Museum. (See external link below).
Félix Arvers' silent love for Marie, immortalized in poem "Un secret" also known as "Sonnet d'Arvers". This poem was taken from a piece he wrote aged 25, "Mes heures perdues" (My lost hours).
Gabriel Garcia Márquez's novel, Love in the Time of Cholera opens with the sentence, "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love," and tell the story of a 51-year unrequited affair. The novel itself depicts five decades of unrequited love.
Dodie Smith's classic novel, I Capture the Castle, is about an enormous triangle of unrequited love, in which the main character is in love with her sister's fiance, who is in love with her sister, who is in love with her fiance's brother. Nearly all the characters suffer at some point from unrequited love.
The sixth century waka poet Ōtomo no Yakamochi wrote of unrequited love: "Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there."
Robert Henryson's fifteenth century poem Robene and Makyne depicts spurned love with the tables turning half way through. Thus it presents the "missed chance" scenario, ending in relection and isolation.
Albert Camus's philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus also touches upon the theme of unrequited love, asserting that "no love is eternal but what is thwarted".
Unrequited love has been a topic used repeatedly by musicians. Blues artists incorporated it heavily; it is the topic of The Temptations' "Just My Imagination," The Shirelles' "Foolish Little Girl", The Supremes' "Nothing but Heartaches", Marcie Blane's "Bobby's Girl", Gene Pitney's "Mecca" and "It Hurts to Be in Love", Little Anthony and The Imperials' "Goin' Out of My Head", Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl",
The Doobie Brothers' "What A Fool Believes", B.B. King's "Lucille" and "The Thrill is Gone," Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" and "Half as Much" and many early and later blues songs. Eric Clapton's band Derek and the Dominoes devoted a whole album to the topic, Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs, which included such famous songs as "Layla" and "Bell Bottom Blues".
British singer James Blunt's hit song, "You're Beautiful", is about an unrequited love as well. Taylor Swift's songs "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "I'd Lie" Anberlin's popular song "A Day Late" are also about unrequited love. Also the American rock band Guns "N" Roses songs "Catcher in The Rye" and "Estranged" are also about unrequited love and also the making of it. Amy Macdonald has also said her song,"A wish for something more" is on the subject.
The Symphonie Fantastique (1830) by Romantic composer Hector Berlioz is one example of a classical work about unrequited love. Many rock n' roll musicians also based songs on unrequited love. Rodgers and Hart composed the song Glad To Be Unhappy covered by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Billie Holliday and The Mamas and Papas. The song contains the lines "Unrequited love's a bore And I've got it pretty bad But for someone you adore It's a pleasure to be sad".
American Heavy metal band Slipknot's "Vermilion, Pt. 2" Mentions this too with the phrase "She's everything to me, the unrequited dream, the song that no-one sings, the unattainable...". The Goo Goo Dolls' song Big Machine is also on this subject. Elliott Smith describes unrequited love in his song "The Last Hour" from the posthumous release of "The Basement on the Hill."
British alternative band Radiohead's song "Creep" has been said by lead singer Thom Yorke to be about a young man's failed attempts at getting the attention of a girl he is attracted to. Many songs by The Smiths are based around unrequited love, especially Back To The Old House and I Want The One I Can't Have. Also Strange and beautiful by Aqualung and White Flag by Dido are about unrequited love.
The bossa nova song "The Girl from Ipanema" ("Garota de Ipanema") also talks about unrequited love: "How can I tell her I love her / ... / But each day, when she walks to the sea / She looks straight ahead, not at me". The many songs of Dusty Springfield convey the theme of unrequited love, most notably "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and "I Only Want to Be with You."
The Chasing Victory album "Unrequited Love" is about just that, Unrequited Love. One of their singles off of the album was entitled "Unrequited Love." Many other songs on the album also referenced the concept of unrequited love.
Nirvana's song, "About a Girl" could be taken as a song about unrequited love.
The song "unrequited" by Therapy? deals with the topic, espeically the negative feelings it can cause on the admirer: "Don't wake me, i'm so empty"
"Why don't you kiss her" by Jesse McCartney is also a song that depicts unrequited love; the song literally encourages the person to tell the admired of one's feeling.
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