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I Want to Wake Up

Being in Love with Someone Who Doesn't Love You Back

We all know what it's like to pine for someone we know we'll never have. This is so common that nine out of ten adults have experienced it to some degree at some point in their life (Bringle et al, 2013). These crushes come on strong and burn bright, but they often end just as quickly as they begin. When we were young and inexperienced with love, it was easy to fall in love whether they loved us back or not, but as we grow older, we learn healthy patterns of attachment and realize that love is meant to be a two-way street. Yet some people continue to cling to one-sided relationships. and when their unrequited love goes bad, they become obsessive. If they do nothing about it, it can drag on for years, and their obsession can take a turn down a very dark path. Unrequited love, or being in love with someone who doesn't love you back, most often arises from platonic friendships or workplace interactions, but it can also arise from a mutually satisfying relationship when one person decides to end it but the other person is still in love (Kivac, 2023). It can manifest in different ways, from persistent pursuit of someone the admirer sees and interacts with on a regular basis to distant admiration of someone they've never met and seen only once. No matter how it starts and no matter how it manifests, it is unhealthy for both people. For the admirer, it creates an emotionally challenging experience characterized by mental turmoil and anguish, and the unreciprocated attraction can harm their self-esteem. For the beloved, it causes confusion and guilt as they learn to deal with having to reject someone they probably care about. Neuroscientists refer to it as limerence, and a whole body of research has developed on the topic over the last few decades.

Limerence

Limerence is an intense, involuntary state of romantic infatuation characterized by obsessive thoughts, emotional dependency, and an overwhelming desire for reciprocation from another person (Wyant, 2015). Researchers liken it to the early stages of intense romantic love. In the beginning of a limerent experience, the admirer spends a great deal of time thinking about their beloved because it brings them a great amount of pleasure. That pleasure is intensified to something like elation or jubilation if there is even a hint of reciprocity. They often replay and analyze every interaction they have with their beloved looking for a sign that they feel the same way. If there are signs, whether real or imagined, they may feel a boost in self-esteem, that such a person would have interest in them. This ecstatic and obsessed state is the core of limerence. Limerence doesn't become a problem until the admirer realizes that their beloved is not interested in the same type of relationship. The admirer never gives up hope and think about their beloved obsessively. The delirious rush of early limerence slowly transforms into the relentless obsession associated with being addicted to a person. All of the pent-up energy and unacted upon action turns inwards and traps the admirer in inescapable thought loops. The starting point for limerence is desire. You meet someone who excites you in just the right way. Being around them intoxicates you. Just being with them is exhilarating. Daydreaming about them is so pleasurable that you indulge in it whenever you get a chance. The reason that you can't stop thinking about them is because they're sending your arousal, reward, and motivation systems into overdrive. They've become a primary source of emotional reward in your world, and your brain will push you to seek more. But if that desire can't be satisfied, it doesn't just fade away. It transforms into obsession. Instead of healthy attraction, you become addicted to them. Unrequited limerence turns toxic when you can't emotionally give up hope. Your mind gets trapped in a state of relentless wanting. And at that point when you realize that you can no longer stop thinking about them even if you want to, new emotional challenges bubble up. Fear, anxiety, shame. You've lost control of your own thoughts and that realization unsettles you.

Key techniques for coping with this emotional pain include accepting reality, setting boundaries to interrupt the reward cycle, and shifting focus toward self-care and healing. The process of healing may seem pretty easy, but I can assure you from personal experience that it is not. In fact, I've been dealing with this particular situation for at least ten years, and the pain continues to get worse and worse. The pain we feel from this situation cuts deep, deeper than the pain we would feel from any other emotional situation. To make it worse, our brain doesn't quite understand what is going on, and it keeps playing tricks with itself that intensifies the pain we're feeling exponentially. .the first time I had sex was in a restroom on the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. I was a student there at the time, and one day between classes, I ducked into a restroom. As I sat there, I noticed a phone number and name written on the wall, so I wrote it down and called the guy. A few days later, I met up with him, and we sucked each other off in a restroom on campus. I still remember it, the way the stall was so crowded with the two of us standing face to face, the way it made me anxious because someone could have walked in and caught us, the way I was incredibly turned on having sex with a guy while at the same time I was freaking out because I was having sex with a guy. The whole thing lasted about ten minutes, then we both pulled up our pants and walked out of the restroom. It didn't occur to me at the time that a restroom was an unusual place to have sex. I was too busy reeling from the experience. I never saw that guy again, but as it turned out, that was not the only restroom on campus that led me to gay sex. Sometime after that experience, I ducked into a different restroom. As I sat down, I noticed someone had written "Tap Your Foot For A Blowjob" on the space between the two stalls. As I contemplated what that meant exactly, I noticed that the toilet paper dispenser began to move. A few seconds later, it completely disappeared as the guy next to me pulled it out of the wall. It freaked me out so much, I immediately stood up, pulled up my pants, and ran out. But I went back. I went back a lot. That restroom was rockin'...all the time. The sex usually happened there in the restroom. Sometimes it would stop when someone entered the rest room, sometimes it wouldn't. Other times, we would go somewhere else on campus for privacy. I remember one time when a telephone serviceman and I walked over to the library and went to the top of the stairwell as if we were going to exit to the roof, but instead that's where we stopped. The space in front of the exit door was a perfect spot for sex. He sucked me off four times no more than an hour. It was the most I had cum in one day at that point in my life. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was forming an impression about what gay sex was, what it was like to have sex with another man, and that impression was that it was dirty, sleazy, secretive, crowded, and anxious.

The Things We Tell Ourselves

Falling in love with someone who will never love you back is not a quick process. It needs time to peculate, to intensify, to deepen. There are signs along the way, that is if you choose to see them, and of course, there are justifications. When the other person's behavior begins to not be what you want it to be, you begin to justify the relationship in your mind. There are several common justifications they think that allow them to continue the infatuation even when they are aware that their love will never be returned. These justifications are extremely powerful yet they often don't realize they are having them. This is why these justifications are so dangerous.

They must feel it too. They feel so connected with the other person that they believe the other person must feel it too. They believe the connection they feel is something special, and because it's special, it cannot be imaginary. They feel like there's an extraordinary romantic potency hanging in the air between them and the other person that feels incredibly meaningful and significant.

Read too much into everything. They overvalue every detail of their relationship with the other person. This involves over-activation of the arousal reward system in the brain, which leads to what's known as incentive salience. driving behavior toward rewards, acting as a force that functions independently of conscious desire or actual liking. Basically, it makes everything the other person says or does seem weighted with importance.

Circling back to proof memory. Limerence often gets stuck in the fixation/desperation phases, and it can start to feel toxic. There are good and bad memories, and these can form anchor memories.memories that have taken on special significance. Now, a way of self-medicating the pain of having a bad experience with your lirant object is to relive and immerse yourself in one of those good anchor memories as a kind of proof that there is something real between you.

I just need to know attitude: At a certain point, you begin to realize that your hopes for a relationship are a lost cause. This can trigger a decision to end contact and start the recovery process. But there's often a nagging voice that's hard to ignore at this stage, a voice saying "I just need to know for sure how they feel." You already know. You just don't want to admit it to yourself.

I feel much better now For those who have started the recovery process, there can come a time when you're feeling good about your progress. If you still have to have contact with the other person, if they're a co-worker or a close friend or a neighbor, it can lead to a thoughts that you are totally over them, so you can go out for coffee together.

Bargaining for friendship: One of the biggest losses caused by limerence is if you are friends with the other person and decide you need to end contact with them. That is a really painful outcome. This is a no win situation because trying to remain friends with the other person brings its own pain and suffering. Many people accept that they must end the friendship but they can't get past the feeling of loss, so they begin to bargain with themselves. I mean, it's not as if he's ever been inappropriate. He only wants to be friends and that's hardly unreasonable. It might be reasonable for him but not for you.

What happens at _____ stays at ______ Mistake number seven, what happens at work stays at work. If you put a whole bunch of attractive people together and ask them to work on projects that can be emotionally demanding and stimulating, they sometimes fall into limrance with each other by accident. But you can't get away from work unless you or your lirant object quit and that makes no contact impractical. Instead, some lirants try to manage this problem by compartmentalizing their lives. I mean, it's not as if we're having an affair or anything. We never get together outside of work because that would be inappropriate. Okay, maybe we'll push the boundaries a bit and we should concentrate on work a bit more, but you know, we understand each other. We both know what's going on, where the limits are, and we're both married, so nothing's going to happen. And yeah, maybe I'm working a bit later than I used to, but when I'm at home, I'm home me. And when I'm at work, I'm work me. It's just like the guys in the office joke. She's my work wife. .

I know what I'm doing Mistake number eight. I know what I'm doing. Of course you do, champ. Looks perfectly safe. Okay, so that's it. Eight common mistakes that liance trying to manage those conflicting and complicated feelings make that actually just prolong the lirance episode that they're struggling through. Maybe you've made some yourself. Hopefully this list can help you see things from a new perspective. If you'd like more information about how to get out of a limrance episode before it's got too far, check out this video on the five phases of lirance and how to escape from them. Okay, thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe if you want more and I'll see you next time.

I Know What It's Like

I know first hand how it feels to be in love with someone who will never love me back because I was an active participant in this type of relationship for more than ten years. I met him in 2003. We hooked up online, and he came to my place to have sex. I remember opening the door, him walking in, my heart skipping a beat. We hit if off immediately, felt like we'd known each other for years. We had some incredible sex that night, sex that I still remember almost twenty-five years later. After that first night, we fell into a pretty consistent pattern of hooking up two or three times a year. The sex kept getting better and better. I always got very excited when we'd hook up. I enjoyed spending time with him, and it seemed he like spending time with me too. At a certain point, our two or three times a year became once a month then a couple of times a month to practically once a week. One night he came over walking with crutches. He had had hurt both of his ankles in a freak accident, and it was difficult for him to move around by himself. He casually asked if he could stay with me for a few days so I could help him get around while he recovered. He ended up staying off and on for a few weeks. During this time, I was able to really get to know him like I never had before. The more I learned about him, the more I like him. I began to realize that I had developed feelings for him, strong feelings.

Works Cited

Bringle, R. G., Winnick, T., & Rydell, R. J. (2013). The Prevalence and Nature of Unrequited Love. Sage Open, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244013492160

French, Kristen. (2025). The Science of Unrequited Love. Psychology, 25(5), https://nautil.us/the-science-of-unrequited-love-1244794

Kivac Rebecca (2024). Unrequited Love. Journal of Human Emotions, 45(4), Ebso. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/psychology/unrequited-love

Wyant BE. (2015) Treatment of Limerence Using a Cognitive Behavioral Approach: A Case Study. Journal of Patient Experience, 31(2), doi: 10.1177/23743735211060812. PMID: 34869848; PMCID: PMC8641115.

Coleman, H., & Charles, G. (2001). Adolescent sexuality: A matter of sense. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 14(4), 17-18.

DeLamater, J., & Friedrich, W. N. (2002). Human sexual development. Journal of Sex Research, 39(1), 10-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490209552113*

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