Ideas about love have changed over the past few centuries, from economic and social function, to romanticization in the Middle Ages, to the idealization of unrequited love. Now the world is dominated by the idea that love is some kind of powerful force that, with the help of a chemical reaction, itself attracts people to each other. There is a lot of infantilism in this idea, the desire for the world/God to give what is needed, to avoid responsibility for decisions made, and the desire to transfer it to some external forces.

There are two options for infantile understanding - since love is something that happens in a miraculous way independent of me - then it should make me happy, or since love is uncontrollable and deceitful, then I myself need to lie in order to have it. As you can see in both cases, the locus of control shifts externally, the only difference is in the initial attitudes - basic trust in the world or distrust, and, accordingly, a feeling of one’s weakness or greatness.

A mature person understands that no one owes him anything (including the world), he accepts circumstances as they are, without fantasies and the desire to get rid of responsibility. Maturity is manifested in the fact that a person stops feeding on the idea of ​​his own grandiosity, realizing that he is not the center of the world and the world cannot obey him or be at enmity with him, since it exists separately. He understands that he also has the right not to be loved and may not be loved - and this is normal, since the other person also has his own will and his own interests, unlike the infantile one, who, like a child, believes that everyone owes him. The intermediate stage to maturity looks like a passive position, but without demands.

What is the difference between a child and an adult? The child does not separate himself from his mother - she is he. As the child grows up, differentiation occurs - that is, he understands that he is separate and his mother is separate. This is a healthy process. If an adult is stuck in the fusion stage, he painfully perceives the world's refusal to obey him. As the child grows up, he begins to take initiative and satisfy his own needs without expecting this from others. An adult not only understands that the world is separate, but also knows how to give something to the world, for which the world will give him what the adult needs. If this skill is not mastered, then panic or regression into an infantile state begins. Thus, the strategy of self-sufficiency may be perceived as less successful, and the person may regress into an infantile state and again enter into a dependent relationship. Therefore, it is important not only to build strong personal boundaries, but also to fill yourself with resources in order to stay within these boundaries. A mature person actively fills his life with resources and builds connections with people around him. Thus, the love that arises does not appear from emptiness, but from the efforts made and the connections built.

The feeling itself does not make you a different person. A person who has many close people, interests, hobbies that nourish him emotionally, give him love, recognition and energy is no longer in a state of emotional hunger, but can consciously choose a partner based on the similarity of interests and how much they inspire.

 Unrequited love feeds on illusions when in real life there is not enough energy and it is empty. The brain is easy to deceive - it perceives everything that we imagine as reality and builds neural connections around these fantasies. An internally filled person will not be able to enter the state of unrequited love - he will simply be thrown out of there, since he does not have an urgent need to feed on illusions.

When meeting a healthy person, interest will either appear or not, and the person will move away - if he sees a lack of reciprocity, since there are enough positive emotions without this, there is simply no time for daydreaming. An unhealthy person will begin to dream, regardless of whether this meeting was mutual or not, since these experiences provide the energy he needs. If a person abandons everything to dream (not to date, but to dream), then it means that there were no truly enjoyable things to do in life.

This simple mechanism protects a healthy person from unrequited love and makes a neurotic (a person with a neurotic personality disorder) almost guaranteed to find himself in the trap of unrequited love.

A healthy person will seriously consider a relationship only if this relationship actually offers something more positive than the existing situation, he needs some words, facts and evidence, he does not take his conjectures into account. And as soon as it turns out that the relationship does not bring the desired positive, a healthy person will return to his interesting life.

A hungry neurotic will grab onto any thoughts and hints that can nourish him with pleasant dreams, thus charging his brain with the hope of happiness in a relationship without reciprocity, which is a priori unhappy.

Hence the conclusion - unrequited love does not exist in healthy people. As soon as they see the lack of reciprocity, they immediately leave such a relationship and do not suffer, returning to their full, interesting life.

Unrequited love is a haven for neurotics who need to seriously engage in psychotherapy of their personality in order to fill the void, nourish their “I” with resources, make it strong and independent, fill their life with interests, hobbies and resources in order to be able to enter into healthy relationships .

Otherwise your whole life will resemble a field strewn with identical rakes. As soon as a neurotic person moves away from one rake, he will immediately step on another, suffer, suffer, but do the same thing.

Of course, psychotherapy is not a panacea for all ills, you now understand how the neurotic mechanism works, you can change yourself, but as a rule, without support it can be quite difficult.

Therefore, I invite you to online positive psychotherapy; this is a short-term therapy method recognized in the world as one of the most effective. I work in it, integrating techniques from other methods depending on the client’s needs. Click the button below to make an appointment.

Take action and you will succeed!