What to do if love is not mutual: advice from psychologists. Unrequited love: how to deal with unhealthy attachment

Non-reciprocal love can both inspire and drive into depression. In some cases, unrequited feelings turn into a real addiction. It is not easy for a person, especially at the very beginning of the formation of attachment, to understand how to deal with himself if there is no chance for reciprocity. Not only insecure individuals and young girls suffer from love experiences, but also accomplished and self-sufficient adults.

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Why there is non-reciprocal love

Love is a deep affection that naturally develops from falling in love after a long relationship, but many people admit that at least once they loved unrequitedly. There are several reasons:

What is the relationship perspective

The tendency to non-reciprocal love does not depend on gender or age, but on the temperament of the individual. Both a young girl and a man in years can unexpectedly fall in love without an answer.

A person who understands that he is adored is able to behave differently. Someone will stop communicating, someone will have an explanatory conversation and offer to remain friends, someone will just laugh. In the latter case, it will be easiest, because in this way the person will present his negative sides.

For unrequited lovers, even reciprocity becomes a shock, especially for those who tune in to rejection and rejection. It often turns out that a person did not dream of a relationship, he just liked the feeling itself.

For a girl, non-reciprocal love is more stressful than for a guy, because it is more difficult for her to take the initiative. A man who has unrequited feelings can achieve reciprocity through courtship and perseverance. A woman has to act with cunning and hints.

Unrequited passion can last only a few months. Then, without receiving a response, the hopelessly enamored loses interest, especially if the object disappears from view. But non-reciprocal love in rare cases can last for many years or even a lifetime. This happens to people who are fixated on monotony and order, not used to change and the implementation of plans. These individuals prefer to go with the flow. They usually avoid new relationships and are afraid.

How to find a solution

To cope with unrequited love, time often helps. Sometimes circumstances do not allow starting a relationship with a loved one: he is married, lives far away, or his relatives are opposed. With family people, not everything is so simple. It happens that a couple is on the verge of a divorce, but a man in love is afraid to take the first step. The spouses eventually disperse, but the chance is missed - the beloved has already found someone else.

Everyone must decide for himself whether to talk about attraction. Refusal is not excluded, they can even laugh at experiences, but in this case there is reason to think whether a person is worth such suffering. Sometimes recognition becomes medicine. Some lovers behave so ugly that the love fever goes away on its own.

Psychologists advise filling your life with new meanings so that achievements and hobbies gradually replace thoughts of unrequited love. But before that, you must definitely cry, grieve, so as not to drive sadness deeper.

Ways to forget unrequited love:

• Analyze your relationship with your loved one. Find negative traits. Look at a man without embellishment.
• Ask friends and relatives to give an impartial assessment of the beloved.
• Get rid of things that are associated with the object of passion. The person will also have to be removed from social networks.
• Devote time to study, work, hobbies.
• Tidy up your appearance.
• Give other people the opportunity to seek their favor, but do not rush to start an affair, as there will be an obsessive need to constantly compare the companion and the lover who needs to be forgotten.

It is necessary to burn bridges decisively and irrevocably. Only then can addiction be cured. Over time, feelings burn out, especially if a person in love is working on self-development.

Each of us wants to love and be loved. How wonderful it is when people find each other and their interests, views and feelings coincide. But it happens quite differently. Non-reciprocal love is often the cause of depression, apathy.

But it is impossible to conclude the whole meaning of existence in a person who does not reciprocate. If it has grown into such an unhealthy attachment, it needs to be fought.

How to forget a loved one?

If your love has not met with reciprocal feelings, you should try to forget about it and move on. Yes, it's not easy. But it's worth a try!

1. Change the environment. If possible, try to get as far away from the object of unrequited love as possible. Perhaps you should change jobs, city, country of residence, or just go on a long vacation.

A change of scenery, new people, current worries will make you look at everything with different eyes. You will feel that life goes on!

Give yourself time to take a break from people, from your thoughts. Don't do anything. A month or two or more will pass and you will feel better.

1. Plan your day so that there is not a single free minute for sad thoughts. Get two jobs, go in for sports or devote yourself entirely to your favorite business.

As a result of the efforts made at work, you will receive an improvement in your financial condition, an increase in the career ladder. Thanks to classes in the gym - a beautiful figure. And constant employment will make it easier to survive unrequited love and get distracted from the object of affection.

1. Don't be afraid to start new relationships! Of course, when you feel ready for them. A comfortable relationship without strong passion, love, affection, based on sympathy and respect is what you need at this stage.

If you feel like you're ready for a new relationship, don't make this common mistake! No need to start "revenging" all men (or women) in a row because your love was once left unanswered. Others of the opposite sex are not to blame for the fact that previous relationships did not work out and your feelings were neglected.

How to help a loved one if he suffers from unrequited love?

If your friend is depressed because his feelings have been rejected, don't leave him alone. Now, more than ever, he needs your support and attention. The following tips will help you properly support a friend:

The best help in such a situation will simply be your presence in the life of a friend. Let him know that he is not alone, surround him with care and warmth.

How to come to terms with the fact that your feelings were rejected and find the strength to live on?

Most of us have experienced unrequited love. Someone faced this at the age of 17-18, someone - at a more mature age. Often, even in harmonious relationships, one of the partners loves, and the other simply allows himself to be loved, using his soul mate.

Understand that love is only mutual. After all, this is a bright feeling, it should bring joy and happiness to both partners. And non-reciprocal love brings only suffering. A person whose feelings have not been answered tries on the role of a victim. Such a position leads to self-destruction, loss of individuality. You need to realize this and try with all your might to get out of this pool.

People tend to idealize the object of love. But time passes, we grow, gain experience, attitudes and values ​​change. Life is multifaceted, and in a year, two or five years, you will be surprised at how you could ever suffer so much because of another person.

In any case, new meetings and mutual feelings await you. When you know the joy of a harmonious and happy relationship, you will not remember your past unrequited love. Find the strength to let go of the feeling that destroys you in order to open your heart to a new life!

Alice, Moscow

When Victor Ediger answers questions during group analytical conversations, you immediately pay attention to his ability to quickly diagnose a person's deep problem. Sometimes it is clear on the basis of what words of the interlocutor the psychologist made this or that conclusion. Sometimes it is a mystery, but the conclusion later turns out to be true anyway. Once, seeing that I could not trace his logical chain in any way, Victor remarked: "Analysis cannot be based only on logic, this is where intuition comes into play". Such a combination of analyticity and intuition helping each other is probably a sign of any good psychologist. It's just that Victor has them in some happy proportions.

However, this brilliance would not, in my opinion, be of particular value if it were not for another quality of a psychologist, which is most felt not at the stage of diagnosis, but at the stage when Ediger gives a task to the person who turned to him. That quality is respect. Respect, the degree and level of which are not immediately revealed. For Victor, his interlocutor is not a creature distorted by a problem that needs to be cleansed of, like a scab, but a unique creature that is very necessary for something in this world. The problem in this view turns out to be useful for the development of a person, precious for revealing his potential. Victor suggests how to handle this gift so as not to go around with it, unpacked and aggravating, in a vicious circle. And it often gives a difficult, but always feasible task.

In order to be able to take such a metaposition, to contemplate the outlines of a person's spiritual path in such a way, a psychoanalyst must periodically feel in himself at least a particle of the deity, who, as you know, knows all paths. I think the divine is in everyone, but not everyone is able to turn to this part of their personality at the right time. Victor is one of those people who can do it.

- You once said that there is no non-reciprocal love. Why? After all, each of life experience can give an example of an unrequited feeling. What did you mean?

I have deeply researched this issue in my time. Interest in a person is always mutual, just not everyone can afford to reciprocate - for various reasons: someone is held back by obligations, someone by prejudice, someone is afraid to take responsibility for the consequences of relationships, and someone is encapsulated in such a way that that he cannot even admit to himself in a reciprocal feeling. In the latter case, one has only to dig a little deeper - and this feeling is revealed.

For example, a man leaves a woman, confused by some attitudes of the society surrounding him (for example, because she has grown fat and does not meet model standards), but in reality it turns out that the relationship has not been exhausted, and he needs this woman. After all, it is with her that some important aspects of him are revealed next to him. Love is always mutual, it's just that people's ways to each other are different, and not always equally clear and open.

- If one person loves another, someone who seems indifferent to him, or is already in some kind of relationship, then you need to admit this feeling?

- Certainly. You can't know what's going on inside someone you like so much. Let him know about your sympathy, and then we'll see. Give him a choice.

- Once I loved a not free man and did not dare to admit it to him, because he adored his wife, and these relationships seemed to me so sacred that my feeling seemed to me treachery. For a long time I disappeared from the field of view of this person, everything burned out in me. And then I found out that a year after the idyllic family life I saw, they broke up. And I thought, God knows what this person would do in a year if he knew what I was experiencing. Moreover, he clearly liked me. Is this an appropriate illustration of what you are talking about?

- Yes, it is quite.

- I remember your reasoning about the speculative concept of "loyalty." You said: “If a person loves a partner and wants to be with him, then what does fidelity have to do with it? And if a person passionately wants someone outside of the current relationship, but does not allow himself to take a step “left”, then what is beautiful called loyalty? Who would want such a "faithful" partner? My question is about betrayal. What is, from your point of view, betrayal in a relationship?

- The concept of "betrayal" exists only in interdependent (even if they are still mutually beneficial) relations of not free people. Not free to take responsibility and make their own choices. In this case, people call betrayal the actions of a person that do not meet the expectations of his partner.

In a mature relationship, a change in behavior, even without warning, is perceived as a subject for dialogue, finding out the reason (if there is a need or interest in this) and making a decision on further relationships. And in the interdependent relationship of a man and a woman, the termination of the expected monopoly on access to the partner's genitals is considered a betrayal.

— How do you understand development in a couple?

- Development, if you look at it, is always individual. The task of a person is to reveal some new possibilities, facets, worlds in himself in order to perceive life in a wider spectrum. He is not yet so self-sufficient as to do it on his own, without the help of other people. Society provokes the disclosure of human potential with its pluralism, variety of forms. Of course, he chooses from the world revealed in himself that which is closer to him in terms of psycho-physiological and spiritual features and continues his development, respectively developing these qualities in the relevant areas: culture, science, applied affairs, etc.. And the beloved (I'm already talking about paired relationships) most of all contributes to the fact that a person reveals in himself and accepts what he could not accept before. Favorite is a more subtle, individually selected instrument.

Development in a couple is, ideally, acceptance in oneself, or at least a search for ways to accept what does not suit a partner and results in claims against him.

- Now I have a feeling that the conversation is being conducted by you from too high positions. From a Buddha's point of view. But I am not a Buddha, and what should I do, say, with the feeling that I have been abandoned, betrayed, or with the feeling that I am betraying someone if I do what I want? I am not so developed and self-sufficient as to be out of it. How to be an ordinary person?

- I answered from two positions: as you put it, the Buddha and the person - also still dependent. More often I stay in the second position, and I receive the first as a gift. I am satisfied with such schizophrenia. The main thing in my answer is still "at leastsearchways of accepting what does not suit a partner and results in claims. "It is difficult to accept, this is a special process: the inertia of the protest does not let it go, love and sympathy help. The main thing is that the process should be at the expense of oneself, and not the partner. Say, it is impossible, from my point of view, to say: "What a scumbag he is, he is never in a hurry to go anywhere, how can he learn mobility in life ...", but better: "HowMedisplays his slowness and equanimity ... WhatTo meto understand what positive side can be hidden in these qualities?” Etc. This is what individual development is, albeit in pairs.

As for the "imperfect feelings" of an ordinary person ... It is important to begin to understand what thisyoursreaction to the actions of a partner. When understanding comes, or better, awareness, then in any case you will grow, become mature, and gradually a different attitude towards your reactions to insults appears, and the reactions themselves gradually change.

- From your point of view, is a pair upgrade possible? It is the plot of many "family" films: the relationship between husband and wife seems to have exhausted itself, their life is emasculated, but some event occurs - and in the finale a situation called "I looked at my husband with different eyes." And then - a new happy life with the same composition of the family.

- No, the reboot is also always individual and is experienced individually. And in these couples, after “I looked at my husband with different eyes”, then there remains so much hidden, “forgotten” pain, so much that is difficult to talk about, that is, so much unaccepted that there is no need to talk about mature relationships. I have encountered this many times. It is possible to resume relations if the couple broke up for at least two years, and then reunited. This has happened. But this will not be a renewal of the relationship of the old people - two new people will meet. And many of them will be different.

- Can you name the criteria that indicate: the relationship needs to be terminated, then there will only be attenuation - degradation?

- Relationships cannot be terminated as long as there is a strong indifferent reaction to a partner, even in his physical absence. Degradation or destruction occurs in the absence of work on one's reactions to the partner's actions, and the energy is directed to claims or attempts to change the partner. Therefore, I recommend stopping external relations after repeated (3-5) unsuccessful attempts to work on yourself.

- You said that after parting, in no case do you recommend looking for another partner on a sense of loss. I understand why: the use of another as an analgin is futile. But a person in such states is cunning and tries to convince himself that the pain of loss has passed. What markers can you indicate that would say that now you can already think about your personal life? And I would also like your recommendations on behavior during the loss of a partner (departure or death), especially in the first few weeks. How to deal with this pain in the most environmentally friendly way?

- After parting, when the relationship is really terminated, the person ceases to have claims against the former partner, moreover, he feels sincere gratitude to him. She is not afraid and does not seek to meet with him. If you have a lot of complaints, then the relationship, despite the absence of a partner, continues.

After the loss of a loved one, you need to consciously devote 10-20 percent of the time of the day to meditation of suffering, despondency, realizing that this is a normal reaction. That is, you need to consciously sit down and suffer, cry, sort through old photos, etc. Gradually, the accumulated pain will be washed out of the body (it will take from two weeks to six months), and you will be left with valuable experience for later life.

And to pretend that nothing happened is to drive suffering deeper. In addition, they will still break through, and then you will be stormed without your participation and much more severely.

If a person does not work on experiences after separation, then it is simply not recommended to seek or allow obviously dependent relationships for two years.

Does this mean that for two years not to look for any relationship at all? Well, it turns out, they will still be dependent, any.

- Various forms of relationships are allowed, but if you find love, you should protect your partner from yourself.

— To prevent painful "sticking"?

— Yes.

— I wonder what you personally still can not accept in yourself?

-It is still not easy for me to accept the rebel inside me, arguing with society. Therefore, he, the poor fellow, jumps out at every step - where it is necessary and not necessary ..

— What small (or big) spiritual discovery have you recently made for yourself, what internally valuable conclusion have you come to?

— Everything has its time.

— In recent years, you have become interested in photography. What does this hobby mean to you?

— Yes, I photograph me too. For me, this is another method of development, such phototherapy is meditation, where I learn to experiment. The formats and patterns of my psyche immediately appear there. In addition, you can track the reaction of others by changing photos in social networks, this helps to change opinions about yourself and accept it all.

— What are the processes (or trends) taking place in modern society, make you happy? What do you especially welcome?

- I welcome the manifestation and approval of completely different and even opposite concepts in everything: opinions, behavior, creativity, everyday life, relationships, science and near-science, politics ... After all, this is what leads to the acceptance of all aspects of life, and only after this acceptance does it become possible to find and realize myself.

Not only today, but at all times, non-reciprocal love was by no means uncommon. Moreover, not mutual, but unrequited love is much more common than shared. It even seems that non-reciprocal love is a much stronger feeling than mutual love. To all the unearthly emotions that love brings, there is also a feeling of severe pain, which only makes all sensations stronger and sharper. Let's look at the option when a person comprehends non-reciprocal love, and what to do in this case.

Why is love not mutual?

Each of us deep in the subconscious has an ideal image of a life partner. This image does not fully appear before us, we cannot realize it, but we can project all the main features of character and appearance onto a person who is attractive or interesting to us. In other words, we don't meet the perfect man, he just seems like that to us. And it is quite clear that the person whom we idealize, in fact, is not such at all. This is the first and main reason for non-reciprocal love: we fall in love not with a real person, but with our ideal, fantasy.

In beautiful films and melodramas, non-reciprocal love almost always ends in a happy ending, but in real life it can lead to much more serious and sad consequences. A person who loves unrequitedly sacrifices himself, consciously accepts conditions under which he will not receive any love in return. This can develop in him serious complexes, stress and nervous breakdowns, and even prolonged depression.

Consequences of non-reciprocal love

Important in the problem of unrequited love is age. The most dangerous thing for teenagers can be non-reciprocal love. What to do in this case and how to help a teenager? After all, this is not a mature person who can quite cope with his problems. Teenagers most often transfer their idealized subconscious image to popular movie stars or pop stars. Non-reciprocal love develops into unhealthy fanaticism, and it seems to your child that mutual love does not exist at all.

Many parents think that this is a problem that will pass with age, but the teenager should be given attention in any case, so you can get rid of unwanted serious consequences. In this case, it will be very important to know how to help a teenager and his fragile young psyche survive non-reciprocal love. Try to interest the child in something else, find him a real occupation, make sure that he communicates with his peers as much and as often as possible. This will distract him from thoughts of non-reciprocal love and being in a world of fantasies and dreams.

We treat unrequited love

It is much harder to cope with non-reciprocal love for an adult. A fully formed personality, fully aware of all the realities of today, is no longer a teenager who, in most cases, “outgrows” his problems. We will try to give some effective tips on how to get rid of unrequited love for an adult.

1. Find the courage to admit that your love is not reciprocated, and any efforts will not lead to the desired result. Coming to terms with the state of things is the first step to healing.
2. Start living a full real life. Fill every minute of your time, try not to keep your head busy with thoughts of non-reciprocal love.
3. Improve yourself: sign up for training courses, for example, language courses, sign up for a gym or dance classes, find a part-time job in your free time.
4. Give your non-reciprocal love time that both teaches and heals and makes us stronger. Believe me, after a month / a year you will be able to look back at everything that has passed with a smile.