5 Tips on How to Handle Unrequited Love

We’ve all been there – loving someone who doesn’t love you back.

So, what is unrequited love?

It is the kind of love that drains you, as you limit your thoughts and feelings to someone who doesn’t love you back, while you are left crumbling with a stabbing pain.

However, it is crucial to remember that it does not make the other person bad or evil.

Nevertheless, it can be so painful to feel unrequited love, feeling rejected, and grieving the loss of what you thought you could have.

But it won’t last forever. Here are a few tips to help you get through the pain of unrequited pain.

1. Unrequited love is going to hurt

Allow yourself to grieve; it is a significant loss, just like any other, even if there was never a relationship.

You were, to some degree, emotionally invested in the person and the potential relationship. You felt love and allowed yourself to care deeply about another human being, no doubt spending time thinking about them and your potential future together.

This can be emotionally draining, especially if there is no return on this emotional investment and you are suddenly forced to feel rejection, sadness, and other intense emotions on top of your existing feelings.

This is understandably a lot to handle – you will most likely experience anger, denial, and any other stages of grief as you process your emotions and try to move on with your life while grappling with unrequited love.

During this difficult time, it is important to remember that these feelings are completely justified and normal for someone in your situation.

Instead of pressing hard on how to stop having feelings, allow yourself to feel your feelings, and accept that what you are going through is actually healthy and expected.

On how to get rid of feelings for someone, you have to be able to acknowledge this pain before you can even begin to try to move forward and heal.

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2. Learn to move on, with or without closure

You have to allow yourself space and time to come to terms with your feelings and continuing to re-expose the wound will only make it harder and more painful for you to beat unrequited love hollow.

You will no doubt want to see them at various points throughout your healing journey but it will be better in the long-run if you resist this urge.

Putting some distance between you will help to give your mind the space it needs to process and heal – how can you move on if you still see them or talk to them all the time? And don’t even think about stalking their social media.

Instead, spend your time doing things you enjoy and with people who genuinely care about you.

Fill your life with friends, family, and fun activities to not only distract you and take your mind off of things but also to bring real happiness and love into your life in a time when you need it most.

But, don’t wallow – find healthy distractions from the broken side of love or the unrequited love.

Allow yourself a limited time to really feel everything, a few days at most ideally, and then move on with your life.

On how to get over unrequited love, there are so many other significant things to centre your focus and energy around.

3. Re-invest in yourself and focus on your future

Dealing with unrequited love, and to detach from someone you love, you need to let go of someone who fails to reciprocate your feelings and work on yourself.

Throw yourself into something new, find something valuable to put your energy into – think about your future, and find something which can move you towards what you picture.

Think about what you want out of life, out of your career, think about old or new hobbies, or learning something new/pursuing educational opportunities.

Often, people allow their own self-image to become wrapped up in another person. When they lose this person in their life, they lose their sense of self.

To navigate the murky waters of heartbreak and wrath of unrequited love, it will be helpful to gain insights offered in this research.

It delves into unrequited love psychology and rejection distress.

Take this time to rebuild your self-concept, work out how to achieve your personal goals, think about the other things in your life (not relationships) which bring you joy, fulfillment, peace, and happiness.

What makes you?

Think about your personal values and beliefs to understand how these things inform your behaviors and try to become more intentional when it comes to decision-making, allow your actions to reflect you.

4. Don’t take the rejection personally

Don’t take the rejection personally.

Remember that loving someone doesn’t mean they must or will necessarily love you in return.

They might be in a different place than you, they may be in a relationship, or they may be dealing with personal stuff – whatever it is, it really isn’t about you.

Just because they don’t reciprocate your feelings doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you or that you weren’t good enough.

It just means that, for whatever reason (and honestly, it almost isn’t your business anyway), they are not looking for a relationship with you. You have to accept this reality of your situation to be able to move forward.

Similarly, you can’t blame the other person for not reciprocating.

A crucial tip on how to detach from someone you love, you should know better than anyone right now that we can’t help how we feel and we don’t get to choose who we love.

Maybe they are in a place where they are not emotionally available to love or be in a relationship, or maybe they simply don’t feel the same way about you as you do them.

Holding onto anger, blame, or resentment will only make the whole ordeal more painful and make it that much harder to move on.

It’s the harsh truth bout the unrequited love that you have to accept, no matter how much it hurts. Until you hurt, you cannot heal.

5. Find meaning in the experience of unrequited love

Think of the positives. ‘When one door closes, another one opens.’

There are constantly new opportunities for things in life, in personal lives like new experiences, hobbies, friendships, or relationships, in your career or education. You never know when you will meet a new person who will make you forget all about your past pains.

At the end of the day, remember you aren’t alone – plenty of people experience unrequited love in their lives and have moved on from it, too.

Don’t be ashamed if you need to take some time to grieve or even seek therapy to help you process your emotions; this is normal and actually very healthy.

Allow yourself time to recover and then pick yourself up and move on!