Let’s just stop here. So much has been written about one-sided love that it has been glorified as the purest form of love. Often compared to devotion, tales of one-sided love usually end on a happy note. Movies will tell you that if a man pesters a woman long enough, one day she too will reciprocate the feelings. And if a woman stands silently by him despite the rejections thrown, he will eventually accept her. The hoax surrounding the unreciprocated love must stop right away.
Firstly, loving a person who doesn’t love you back is painful. You look at them with hopes in your eyes, not knowing that a ‘no’ is just around the corner. You look at them and think that they are the one for you, but they don’t give you a single chance. What is worse is when you talk of them as if your world begins and ends with them and they look at you as if you are nobody. Late into nights, when there’s no sign of sleep, you wonder if they think about you at times. You know the answer though.
One-sided love is painful enough in itself, what makes it more difficult is the build-up of hopes. When the overtly text book romance tales keep surfacing, often beginning with rejections, but always ending as a happily ever after, your hope of a similar fate increases.
Friends often play the role of sadists by pushing you towards that person who is obviously not into you. They tell you to keep trying and that eventually the object of your pursuit will give in. This entire cycle is so confusing, that you at the end of it all, you’re left with your insecurities and low confidence.
Secondly, what this obsession surrounding one sided love does is that it gives the power to the road side romeos to carry out harassment under the charade of love and romance. It would be wrong to put the entire blame on them, when mainstream movie tellers would tell you that if you stalk a woman and eve tease her, she will be impressed by the display of your machismo and put her heart at your feet.
Ideally, one sided love would mean to love someone without the expectations of them loving us back. But human nature makes the entire thing a complicated mess.
Glorifying one-sided love stories just drowns you in a delusional cycle of hope followed by heartbreak, with its intensity on a constant rise. If you see your friend falling for that girl or guy who has clearly given a ‘No’, don’t tell your friend to pester him/her with long texts, calls or by following around as a stalker. Instead, be a good friend and put into their minds the painful reality that they need to move on.
Give one-sided love stories a break and look for better alternatives.