Unrequited love is alove which is not reciprocated, one-sided or more generally unequal, resulting in a yearning for more complete love.[1][2][3]Lovesickness is the resultingmental state.[2] This might occur in a context where little or norelationship exists between the participants (even as inparasocial love for acelebrity), or it might occur inside a relationship with unequal love, commitment or effort.[1][2][4] Unequal (unrequited) love is more common than equal love.[1] Reciprocal love is called "redamancy".[5]
According to thepsychologistDorothy Tennov, the state of "being in love" is distinguishable from the many other uses of the word "love" (such as caring or concern), for: 'Affection and fondness have no "objective"; they simply exist as feelings in which you are disposed toward actions to which the recipient might or might not respond.'[8] ThepsychiatristEric Berne said in his 1970 bookSex 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."[9]
According toRoy Baumeister, what makes a person desirable is a complex and highly personal mix of many qualities and traits. Falling for someone who is much more desirable than oneself—whether because of physical beauty or attributes like charm, intelligence, wit or status—Baumeister calls "prone to find [its] love unrequited" and states that such relationships will not last.[10]
"Platonic friendships provide a fertile soil for unrequited love."[11] 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 their true feelings, a fear that revelation of feelings might invite rejection, causeembarrassment or might end all access to the beloved, as a romantic relationship may be inconsistent with the existing association.
"There are two bad sides to unrequited love, but only one is made familiar by our culture"[12]—that of the lover, not the rejector. In fact, research suggests that the object of unrequited affection experiences a variety of negative emotions exceeding those of the suitor, including anxiety, frustration, and guilt.[10] AsFreud pointed out, "when a woman sues for love, to reject and refuse is a distressing part for a man to play".[13]
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 that have less relevance in western, democratic societies with relatively high social mobility and 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'."[14]
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. How much greater isDante gazing atBeatrice than Beatrice walking by him in apparent disdain."[15]
Roman poetOvid in hisRemedia Amoris "provides advice on how to overcome inappropriate or unrequited love. The solutions offered includetravel,teetotalism,bucolic pursuits, and ironically, avoidance of love poets".[16]
In the wake of his real-life experiences withMaud Gonne,W. B. Yeats wrote of those who "had read/All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing/Returned and yet unrequited love".[17]
According toRobert B. Pippin,Proust claimed that "the only successful (sustainable) love is unrequited love",[18] something which according to Pippin, "has been invoked as a figure for the condition ofmodernity itself".[19]
The comic stripPeanuts presents many examples. Some of it is based on creatorCharles M. Schulz's love for Donna Mae Johnson, the inspiration for the strip's "little red-haired girl". Many of the characters are attracted to others who do not feel the same to them.
The medieval Japanese poetSaigyō may have turned from samurai to monk because of unrequited love, one of hiswaka asking: "What turned me to wanting/to break with the world-bound life?/Maybe the one whose love/turned to loathing and who now joins with me in a different joy".[20] In other poems he wrote: "Alas, I'm foreordained to suffer, loving deep a heartless lass....Would I could know if there be such in far-off China!"[21]
Mural of a text message reading "I love you" and anellipsis as atyping awareness indicator on the left.In China, passion tends to be associated not with happiness, but with sorrow and unrequited love.[22]
Rather than being a specificemotion itself, romantic love is believed to be amotivation or drive which elicits different emotions depending on the situation: positive feelings when things go well, and negative feelings when awry.[23][24][25] Reciprocated love may elicit feelings ofjoy,ecstasy, orfulfillment, for example, but unrequited love may elicit feelings ofsadness,anxiety, ordespair.[23][26] A 2014 study of Iranian young adults found that the early stage of romantic love was associated with the brighter side ofhypomania (elation, mental and physical activity, and positive social interaction) and bettersleep quality, but also stronger symptoms ofdepression and anxiety. Those authors conclude that romantic love is "not entirely a joyful and happy period of life".[27] Romantic love may be either pleasant or unpleasant, regardless of the intensity level.[28][29] One ofDorothy Tennov's interview participants recalls being in love this way: "When I felt [Barry] loved me, I was intensely in love and deliriously happy; when he seemed rejecting, I was still intensely in love, only miserable beyond words."[29] The intensity of love feelings is also distinct from whether an individual is satisfied with their relationship (although the measures have been shown to be related to some extent). One can be satisfied with their relationship because it fulfills some other need besides love for their partner (likemoney orchild care), or conversely be in love with an abuser in anabusive relationship.[23]
Unrequited love is common amongyoung adults.[30] A study byRoy Baumeister and Sarah Stillwell found that 92.8% of participants reported at least one "powerful or moderate" experience of unrequited love in the past 5 years.[31] A different study found 63% had a "huge crush" at least once in the past 2 years (but not letting the person know), and unrequited love was four times more frequent than equal love.[30] Another found that 20% had experienced unrequited love more than 5 times, according to a definition that "When one is experiencing this emotion, it has been described as having one’s emotions on a roller coaster, finding it difficult to concentrate, and thinking constantly about the person with whom you are in love. The person is said to have the power to produce extreme highs and lows of emotion in you, depending on how he or she acts towards you."[32]
In 2010,Helen Fisher,Arthur Aron and colleagues published theirfMRI experiment investigating which areas of the brain might be active in recently rejected lovers. Participants had been in a relationship with theirex-partner for an average of 21 months, and then were post-rejection for an average of 63 days at the time of the experiment.[33] These participants reported spending more than 85% of their waking hours thinking of their rejector, reported a lack ofemotional control, and exhibitedunhappiness, with sometimes more extreme emotions like depression,anger, and evenparanoia in pre- and post-interviews.[33][34] Similar to other fMRI experiments, the scan while looking at a photograph of the rejecting partner showed activations indopaminergicreward system areas, like theventral tegmental area andnucleus accumbens. These activations were also stronger than in a previous experiment of participants who were happily in love. The nucleus accumbens,prefrontal cortex andorbitofrontal cortex which were active have been associated with assessing one's gains and losses, and areas of theinsular cortex andanterior cingulate cortex which were active have been involved withphysical pain and pain regulation (respectively) in other studies.[33][35]
^abcMoney 1997, p. 119, 132–133: "The English language lacked a noun singular for the state of being love smitten, or having fallen in love, until Dorothy Tennov (1979) coined the term, limerence, to fill the void. It is formally defined as follows:
limerence (adjective, limerent)
the personal experience of having fallen in love and of being irrationally and fixatedly love stricken or love smitten, irrespective of the degree to which one’s love is requited or unrequited.
[...] Unrequited love is a synonym for unrequited limerence. It leaves a person vulnerable to an attack of lovesickness. Lovesickness may be transitory or prolonged, and major or minor in degree. It may be brought on by a person's anticipatory uncertainty about getting or not getting a reciprocal response to his/her limerence. Lovesickness may be brought on also by unequal proportions of limerence, for example, 100:70 instead of 100:100. The most unequal match is 100:0, total rejection.The formal definition of lovesickness (Money, 1986) is as follows.
lovesickness
the personal experience and manifest expression of agony when the partner with whom one has fallen in love is a total mismatch whose response is indifference, or a partial mismatch whose reciprocity is incomplete, deficient, anomalous, or otherwise unsatisfactory."
^abBaumeister & Wotman 1994, p. 6: "Unrequited love refers to romantic, passionate love that is felt by one person toward another person who feels substantially less attraction toward the lover. It is not necessary that the object of unrequited love be thoroughly indifferent (or be negative and hostile [...]), for as we will see many rejectors do feel some friendship and liking for their admirers. But the discrepancy between liking and loving is apparent to all, and people in love typically find it quite inadequate to hear that the other likes them but fails to love them. We shall also use the term 'love' broadly, referring to any strong romantic attraction."
^"To love or be loved in vain: The trials and tribulations of unrequited love. In W. R. Cupach & B. H. Spitzberg (Eds.), The dark side of close relationships (pp. 307-326). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Carpenter, L. M. (1998)Spitzberg, p. 308
^Janet Malcolm,Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (London 1988) p. 9
Robert Burton,The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York 1951) THE THIRD PARTITION: LOVE-MELANCHOLY
Mead, Nicole L.; Baumeister, Roy F. (2007),"Unrequited love", in Baumeister, Roy F.; Vohs, Kathleen D. (eds.),Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, SAGE Publications,ISBN9781412916707
