“…what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it? ” ~ James Patterson

I hate Cupid!

Nothing personal, but I do not like him. This small prankster often makes nothing for us but troubles, when he hits a wrong person…unrequited love begins.

I hate Cupid, because I’ve been his victim before.

I remember this awkward feeling, the combination of delight (being in love and having inspiration and strengths to deal with anything; all those butterflies in my stomach doing everything for me) and suffering from understanding the fact that he’ll never be mine.

He did not feel the same, he lived in another city, and he registered me in his friend zone. Yes, a jolly mess I was in!

It was a constant battle of my heart and head. If you have experienced unrequited love at least once, you would understand how it is to know that nothing will work out.

Yet the heart still hopes. Here you love sadly, recognizing slowly that the unrequited love is a real curse.

What I felt first was a real obsession: I could not wait for the moment to see him and talk to him and I was looking for some hints in his behavior which would tell me he considered me something more than just a friend. After a year of such “adventure”, I’ve understood that I had to do something about this feeling.

My very first step was the perception of the fact I could cope with this love if I really wanted to do that.

I tried to distract myself by taking courses to improve my professional skills, helping poor people and starting a new project.

I tried to accept this love as a gift, a kind of unique experience I was blessed to have.

I understood that this unrequited love was meant to play a definite role in my life, and this feeling was sent to me for something. My heart did not want to accept the fact I would never be with my crush, so, I had to do something with that.

After reading a lot of advice about this and trying many things (which did not all work), I was surprised to see that the simpler the trick was, the better it helped me.

Here are the 5 tricks that helped me the most:

1. I am choosing to see other sides of him.

Do you know your crush well? When we are in love, we often idealize a person and forget about the fact, that nobody is perfect. Sure, my love couldn’t have any drawbacks: he was handsome, kind, passionate, reliable, strong, and so on and so forth.

Try to see something other than the ideal. This will and it will help to break your obsession. Maybe he is rude with other people, he doesn’t share your views, he has bad habits you can’t stand, etc. My crush used so much vulgar language speaking to his friends I could hardly stand it.

2. Isolate.

This doesn’t mean that we close ourselves in a room and forget about people, but definitely isolate from the crush.

I’ve stopped checking his Facebook and other social media every minute, I did not ask our common friends about him and I tried to avoid places he usually visited. It can be very difficult to do this, because when you are in love you want to know about his every step. The thing is: that’s verging on paranoia.

3. I didn’t ignore dates.

How could I think about dating others when I was in love? I could actually. Sitting and crying at home will not give us anything good anyway, so why not spend some time with interesting people?

Just try to live life in full. Ask a friend for a dinner, or drink some coffee with a colleague you want to know better. If you are in love now, there will be no risks to crush on someone new. Just relax and get pleasure from conversation with interesting people. They may become your very good friends in the future.

4. I’ve learned to love myself.

All mental troubles will fade away when we choose to love ourselves first of all. You are a cool person, you are strong and all-sufficient, you accept yourself and, what is even more important, you respect yourself.

I’ve just tried to accept that, and I’ve understood I could cope with everything.

5. I’ve said ‘No’ to illusions.

When we are in love, we always have a hope that the crush loves us back but we make excuses, like how he is just shy to show or tell you about this feeling.

Every time when he says hello or likes your photo on social media, we consider it a sign of interest and hope flares up again. The heart doesn’t want to accept the fact, that your crush won’t love back, so we keep thinking: “What if…?”

What could I do here? I’ve just set some terms. He doesn’t ask me out, does he? He is not interested in talking to me? There is no place for illusions here: if he keeps silence and doesn’t ask you out for a week or more, your crush probably is not interested in you… I’ve accepted it, and kept living.

The only food for unrequited love is fantasy, and I’ve just stopped feeding it. I open my heart and mind to real love which will definitely be mutual this time.

Can you do the same?

Love elephant and want to go steady?

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Apprentice Editor: Kimby Maxson/Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Wiki Commons