8. The Psychology of Unrequited Love - why we love those who don’t love us back.
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Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, a very unprofessional podcast whereby I, your unqualified guide, talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Okay, so welcome back. I'm recording this episode in my car in my backyard today just because you know how it is lockdown all my housemates are home. I don't really want to annoy them with my ranting about this week's topic.

It also means if you hear like some beautiful bird noises, hopefully it brings something to the ambience. It's very Snow White-esque. Okay, let's get into it. So this episode is probably my absolute favourite I have ever recorded. Don't get me wrong, I really have loved all the other topics that I've covered. But I think that none have kind of struck me so personally as this one. And it's really hit a bit of a raw nerve for me.

Honestly, like researching this, thinking about this, because currently, if you don't know, Canberra is in lockdown due to the Delta strain as as many parts of Australia. Thanks, Sydney, for that one. But as much as it has created some existential dread, it's also given me a lot of thinking time and reflection time. And something that I've been really thinking about a lot in this period of isolation is unrequited love.

I posted about this on my Instagram, I think maybe like a week ago. And overwhelmingly, people really wanted to hear about the psychological underpinnings of this experience. You know, a love that is unrequited and unreciprocated is such a universal and shared experience. And I think it's such a consuming one too. You know, it suffocates all else in our minds and it extends beyond us.

reason and rationality in so many ways despite all acknowledgement you know that someone does not love you back we cannot help but pine and suffer after them and as a repeated victim of this lovesick situation I really kind of wanted to uncover some of the hidden psychological secrets maybe behind why we develop strong feelings for those who could never reciprocate those feelings back

Now, I feel like I don't really need to explain how unrequited love relates to our 20s. Like, let's not kid ourselves. Spotify gives me a little wrap-up of the ages or demographics of people who listen each week. And overwhelmingly, or as the title of my podcast could probably predict, the majority of you are in your 20s. And I'm sure are very familiar with this feeling, that fucking gut-wrenching feeling of having these insanely...

strong emotions and expectations of someone who will never you know could never return them and the pain the confusion of unrequited love I think it is its own psychological challenge and if

You know, you say you've never experienced unrequited love. Well, firstly, this episode is not for your ears. Please kindly leave. This is a safe space. But secondly, I think you're probably lying to yourself. You know, I refuse to believe that there is someone out there who has only ever loved those who has loved them back in equal measure. It's impossible. Like psychology literally says it's impossible, which we'll obviously get to in a moment.

Anyhow, like I mentioned, I've been thinking about unrequited love quite a lot in this time of lockdown. You know, I kind of used to semi-joke that I came out of the room in a state of unrequited love and I still slightly believe it. You know, it feels weird to share this insanely personal experience

of my life, but fuck it. I think it is a universal human experience that needs to be shared. And for a long time, unrequited love really did define much of the narrative I would tell about myself. You know, the men I was so in love with, so devoted to, so had so much admiration for, who would never reciprocate. It was such, and I think still is, a fundamental part of my experience with love or maybe my misguided interpretation of love.

what it is. I, you know, I don't really feel any shame in saying that, especially through some of my investigative work for this podcast. I do think, you know, you never really escape the ego wound of loving someone who doesn't love you. And there's a part of your soul and your self-conception that does not forget that hurt. It's a wound that really does

deep into your psyche and it becomes ingrained into you and it does become part of how you address all future experiences of emotion and feeling because it is it's bigger than rejection you know unrequited love is not just rejection it is heartbreak itself and a lot of research into how our brain reacts to human connection really does confirm this there have been so many people who I have believed I have loved and

And who have not loved me back. You know, one of them is even married now. And there are times, especially in this recent week, strangely, when, you know, I have had time to reflect on that emotional experience that I do feel these like stranely old urges and the pain of

longing kind of slip back into my consciousness despite knowing very well that this is not something that will ever come to fruition you know he's he's married like it's never going to happen so why is it that our brain reacts so irrationally when we are confronted with these feelings and expectations and what I really wanted to find out in this episode is if that is really love like all those intense emotional experiences and

Are we correct in labeling them as love, even unrequited love or love of a lesser degree? So like I said, a highly personal episode. But I think, you know, I've always said this podcast was for my own self-exploration. And if you get something out of it, if you connect to my stories of, you know, always being the one who has more to give than I could ever receive, I'm glad that you can get something out of it.

And I feel like I've talked to my friends about this so often, you know, this is probably time for an immense shout out to my friends like Kate and Erin, friends of the show, who I think for years have witnessed me becoming overly invested in silly little men and then crying on their shoulder a month later. But I always hear the same line of reasoning for this predicament.

You know, it's always you love too much, you care too deeply, you see the best in everyone, you have so much to give. And this episode is really dedicated to erasing that myth.

that only those who have this surging capacity to feel end up in a predicament of unrequited love. Like make no mistake, unrequited love has an origin in our formative experiences and how we've been taught to expect rewards and returns from our expression of emotion. And unrequited love can occur because our mind is simply hijacked or programmed to

to respond to what we interpret as love in a very specific way and beyond a level of consciousness. So, okay, with that kind of fun thought in mind, let's jump into the psychology of it all. I once had someone tell me that unrequited love was the purest form of love. And despite that being true,

kind of highly manipulative for the situation that we were in. This was years ago, like four or five years ago. And what he has said has stuck with me because his sentiment is absolutely everywhere. But whether it's correct is probably a whole nother debate. You know, there's that quote that all poets must have an unrequited love and true love is that which we can never meet. And we see unrequited love showing up

everywhere in pop culture and media performances movies um you know call me by your name great gatsby obviously pokes of being a wallflower even forrest gump um it is such a deep inspiration for a lot of creative works like like music and art as well and um oh my gosh that there's that one this one song that always gets me when i find myself

in these situations as I regularly do. It's Adele's version of "I can't make you love me" and if you are currently experiencing a love that is unrequied, unrequied, un-requited

listen to that song, feel your pain and take it as a sign to move the fuck on. Because if you are listening to Adele, they are not the one, like they are just not it. But in all seriousness, it is a really beautiful song. And I think the repeated theme of unrequited love across a lot of creative media really expresses two things that relate to the psychological underpinnings of this concept. You

The experience is universal and has some innate premise that makes it so commonplace. As I've kind of alluded to, everyone has experienced this. We all tend to make other people sacred.

In the absence of true emotional connection. You know, placing someone on a pedestal is better than acknowledging that we have been short-sighted in essentially worshipping someone that's really not worth our time. I think very few of us can...

can rationalize desire and can rationalize wanting someone who does not love or want you back and i'll go more into this later but a love that is unrequited unrequited is very much tied to our brain chemistry it's tied to reinforcement and behaviorist theories as well as attachment style as well which i think is often must you know really misunderstood and

but does greatly contribute to this experience. And essentially, there are core aspects of the human psyche that inexplicably lend themselves to experiencing unrequited love, even if it's from a distance. But I think, as I'm sure we all know, it is often experienced for those who we do have somewhat of an emotional or pre-existing sexual or physical connection with.

Secondly, from how this experience is portrayed as romantic and a powerful force, we can see that unrequited love is somewhat glorified by our society in kind of an unnecessary way. And I definitely want to talk more about why I find this interpretation so incorrect later on, because I think although we romanticize love,

The suffering and grief of longing of not being loved back. It is actually a really fucking terrible feeling. And can we even call that love? You know, a feeling that is that painful in many ways. Is it right to...

kind of combine that with something that is meant to be as beautiful as love and I think the romanticization of unrequited love also relates greatly to our glorification of things that are beautiful particularly art and

As that quote I cited before kind of captured, we have this preconception or idea that pain lends itself so fully to creative expression and feeling human in a way that few other emotional experiences let us do and in much life grief and death.

The absence of love is such a moving experience that we must glorify it because of what it produces artistically and creatively. But the pain and discomfort of...

You know, it's not something to be understated from a psychological perspective. That feeling of hurt that is associated with something deeper than rejection, it does cause long-term shifts in neural pathways, our schemas of the world, and how we learn to interpret people's actions as either threats...

Or as encouragement. And before we dive into this, I do think we firstly need to talk about the origins of unrequited love. You know, I've mentioned that I do believe it's a universal experience and it's often given this beautiful, you know, honey gold tint to it. Longing for someone who may have no interest in you or maybe someone else does seem really beautiful at face value. But then...

Why do these feelings emerge if we know that they are illogical and contradict how we may see ourselves as self-reliant and independent? That's something I often find is...

I have these feelings of unrequited love for someone. I think I really care about them. You know, you can become obsessed with them. But at the same time, there's this contradictory voice in my head saying, you know, you don't need them if they don't, you know, the phrase that my friend Aaron always uses is like, the egg doesn't chase the sperm. Like, if they don't like you back, that does create kind of a cognitive dissonance with this sense that you are this independent person who will survive without them. Okay. Okay.

I have a few theories around this, obviously, which is why I'm making this podcast. But firstly, unrequited love, it serves a purpose as an emotional curtain or a distraction from the real issues that we may be experiencing, you know, external to these feelings of desire and

it can act as a substitute and a substitute emotional trial almost for the real underlying issues that are afflicting our ego. And I can definitely relate to this. I remember even recently an episode of love that was unrequited that I've been through with some guy I've been talking to for months and, you know,

Yeah, I started developing feelings for him. They obviously weren't reciprocated, but there was some small part of my brain that was almost grateful I had this person to preoccupy my mind with because it meant that I could have a mental reprieve from thinking about the bigger issues that were going on, you know.

I really remember it was almost like a conscious sigh of relief. Like, thank God you've come along and fucked with my feelings because now I can project all this other shit onto you.

And you can kind of be like a little thought vacation from the reality and then the past that I have to heal from. So if your mind is preoccupied with thoughts of another person, admiration for them and fantasies of, you know, what it could be like if your feelings were reciprocated as well as that emotional discomfort of the what ifs.

That is like the ultimate distraction from other aspects of your life that may be causing insecurity or general unhappiness. You know, our brain and our mind is at all times looking towards self-preservation and investing your pain in someone else is an excellent distraction and allows your brain to move away from other persistent thought patterns, perhaps about past loves, in my case that's what it was, or even aspects of your life that are entirely unrelated, you know, unrequited love for a short while.

does serve as a substitute or a distraction. Okay, but it's obviously, I think, more than just a coping mechanism for other aspects of your life that you might not be happy with. Another theory, which is a more learning-based theory, suggests that these

This unreciprocated feelings and this pattern of sinking deep into emotions for someone who's obviously unavailable comes from a pattern of past love, perhaps starting early in life that has taught you to crave what is being withdrawn and held back. And on the flip side, it makes you scared of love that is obvious and available to you.

You don't simply fall for people because of an innate weakness or a personality characteristic, but because it is a pathological pattern of behavior that you've been taught, especially from formative experiences.

Maybe like a first love or from observing others like your parents or those around you. So this experience and seeing these things creates memory roots in your mind that are associated with a particular feeling or reaction. And in this scenario, a feeling that is akin to what we believe is love. So for example...

Say the first person you ever loved or dated was really inconsistent with how they showed affection or love.

They would say things that contradicted their actions, like saying that they loved you and then showing little physical intimacy or few acts that actually reflected that love. You know, they had it, they had the words for it, but they weren't able to kind of demonstrate that they did have these feelings, you know, but they call it love and you assume that's love. So in the future, when you have feelings for someone who reacts in a similar way, that's love to you.

you convince yourself of the possibility that, you know, what is one-sided, quite obviously, it may actually be more nuanced. Like, no wonder you'll be attracted to people who are similarly withdrawn or in some cases just, like, blatantly uninterested, right?

because our brain is confused. It's programmed in some way to take ambiguous situations or situations even of ambivalence from another person, reflect back on those early experiences of love and match these experiences. You see those similarities and this kind of results in a cycle of feeling, of emotion, of care that is really unsatisfying.

And probably often one-sided because, well, you know, obviously you continuously fixate on people who are not interested. Love that is available, on the other hand, may be scary because it doesn't match your pre-existing and internal conception of what that feeling should look like.

It kind of all comes down to what we expect love and relationships to appear like. And this also connects to attachment styles, which I alluded to earlier. You know, getting stuck in the loop or repetition of consuming, you know, crushes and unrequited love. This kind of signals towards a fearful avoidant attachment style, which is in contrast with something like secure attachment. So let's break down, break this down a little bit.

Because I know attachment style gets talked about quite a lot, but what do they actually mean? Okay, so these four attachment styles. There are four attachment styles, one of which really relates to unrequited love. And then there's kind of two that are in the middle, and then there's one that's, you know, secure attachment. And that's kind of, we'll start with that one. Secure attachment is like the gold standard for

Like if you want to pick an attachment style, you probably want to pick this one. You know, people with this attachment style, they have basically they have the ability to form secure loving relationships. You know, who doesn't want that? They're not afraid of intimacy and they're able to depend on others without becoming, you know, totally dependent on that person. They're also better able to recognize when someone is not interested and

and remove themselves. So it's kind of in the name, secure attachment style. These people, they're secure in how love is shown and their interpretations of love and they can reciprocate but also receive. So next we have anxious attachment. This is marked by like deep fear of abandonment and clingy behavior. And then we have avoidant or dismissive, which I think is probably...

the shittiest or the second shittiest form of attachment style someone can have. So essentially what this attachment style means is you just have a fear of intimacy and you really just avoid getting close to anyone. People with this dismissive and ambivalent avoidant, whatever you want to call it, attachment style, they're more likely to have relationships whereby one party is just highly emotionally unavailable and they really prefer to be independent.

Finally, we have fearful avoidant attachment style. And this is kind of a combination of anxious and avoidant attachment style. So people with fearful avoidant, they desperately crave affection, but they also want to avoid it at all costs.

um this is kind of why it's also known as disorganized attachment and it is associated with significant psychological and relational risks you know including a greater greater likelihood of a repetition or pattern of unrequited obsessions and unrequited love and this style it's

It's developed in the formative years of a person's life and it's highly dependent on the responses and the nature of their bond with their primary caregiver, so usually their mother or their father. And the kind of bonding one has with their primary caretaker in their formative years goes on to define their attachment style. So someone with fearful avoidant probably had a parent or maybe an early relationship with

in which love was shown inconsistently and perhaps combined with violence or manipulation or emotional abuse. It may also then, the flip side of that may be that a lot of love bombing may have taken place

in response so the person whether it's a first boyfriend or girlfriend or a parent they withdraw love they combine love with manipulation and then they also you know overwhelm you with love when they feel guilty so this person kind of learns to crave a love that is withheld but it's also fearful of feelings that are obvious and apparent because they indicate you know something else coming along and this kind of leads to the cycle of unrequited love okay

Obviously, this is not the only answer. I've pointed out multiple times the universality of this experience. So there is another element. And it's not just those with fearful avoidant who would find themselves in this situation because this attachment style only makes up 4% of the population. And if the statement I'm making, and I'm pretty sure I would be right, like most people have experienced unrequited love.

you know, if only 4% of the population is fearful avoidant, this assumption that it's just because of your attachment style is obviously incorrect. So another theory put forward is that unrequited love also has a lot to do with sunk costs.

And variable reward. And you know, self-delusion as well. So if you like someone and you've built this image of a future with them or a fantasy in which they play a role, you have invested in the notion that they are a good person and someone who is worth your time.

We often will also make the mistake of viewing everything they do with rose-tinted glasses and giving their actions a lot more meaning than they probably deserve.

So in this way, it's hard to break away from those feelings because of sunk costs. Essentially, we've already spent emotional capital on this person and time that cannot be recovered. And we have already, you know, metaphorically spent this emotional currency. We don't want that to go to waste. So we continue to pursue them either in our minds or externally because we want these sunk costs to have some output.

or a positive consequence for us. We don't want to lose that investment of time and energy and thought that we've placed in that person. Secondly, when we are experiencing love that is unrequited, we also have to consider variable rewards. So the use of variable rewards, it's more of like an economic term, but...

It's often used in marketing, but variable reward, it's used in gambling all the time because it's a pattern of reinforcement that is just scientifically proven to be the easiest way to get someone hooked to an activity. So essentially, your behavior is rewarded on a schedule that is impossible to predict. So with gambling, you know, it's the best example because

you just never know when you're gonna get a jackpot or when you're gonna get your money back. So in regards to relationships, for example, you know, you text someone and sometimes they leave you on read for like days.

And other times they're super enthused and they get back to you quickly, but it's impossible to tell when each response may occur. So think about it, this in the case of unrequited love, you know, you have these feelings for a person and occasionally that person may accidentally or maybe purposely reinforce them by hanging out with you, laughing with you, reaching out.

And every time we try and pull away and be reasonable or realistic about our feelings, this variable reward schedule kind of sinks us back into it. It's really difficult to escape. So we are really good at convincing ourselves of the things that we want to believe. So self-delusion is, like I kind of said, is also a huge part of unrequited love. The fantasy that one day you

This person might change their mind, turn around, confess their feelings. It's really self-soothing for a lot of those different reasons that I've mentioned. And often it is that person who is the most unavailable, which is why we become hooked, because it is their unwillingness to acknowledge you as a sexual or romantic partner that keeps you in a state of expectancy and longing.

And this may especially be the case for those who are high achievers or those who have big ambitions. You know, we are so often told that if it was easy, everyone would have it. So you want the thing that is most unattainable. So you subconsciously go after the least available person because to win them would be just the biggest hit of self-endorsement.

And so I think it really does go without saying there is just a lot of insecurity and an unrequited love. And the thing that really does keep us hooked is the notion that one day things could change.

What we ultimately are seeking is love and to be cared for and acknowledged and seen. And love is a social value, perhaps one of the most important. No other idea or feeling in history is as revered as love. But the way...

this concept this larger than life emotion is displayed in our culture is really contradictory and I think it's what contributes to this admiration of unrequited love because there are these two distinct displays or depictions of love in our society that are so so very different but they're equally admired and I think this is what contributes to these confused feelings around reciprocation so firstly we see love as this stable mutual

enduring force that is comfortable and safe this is often associated you know with long-term relationships and ideas of marriage and long-term couples but on the other side of the coin we are also taught to see love as this burning electric desire you know characterized by

butterflies and intensity and full of longing and hope and you know just oh my god it's almost painful like you just love them there's nothing you can do to control it

And these two depictions, they essentially make up our romance culture. And it creates this like Madonna whore complex, but for love, whereby you have to have both. You have to be in pursuit of what is stable, but also constantly in a state of this all-consuming electric feeling. And our idea of love as a society is so fucked in that way, you know. It creates such an internal confusion. Because if you think about someone that you're obsessed with,

This person, you know, you're consumed by them. You're consumed by this electric feeling. And, you know, all this confusion and these butterflies and this uncertainty. And that's what you think love should be. And if only they could see this or you could convince them, we could achieve that long-term stability and comfortability that everyone wants. But that initial feeling of obsession...

society teaches you that that's what love should look like but I don't think it should you know unrequited love comes with a lot of resentment for that other person because they can never fulfill your fantasy because well firstly they haven't consented to it they may not even know it exists you know they may not even be aware but we still feel anger towards them and can we

um can that really be love can a feeling that includes so much resentment and anger and frustration does that mean that unrequited love is real love and i had a huge huge discussion with my housemate around this actually i think revealed like a lot of revelations about how we think about ourselves in the process but that's kind of beside the point

What we came, the conclusion we came to is that there are two broad strokes and I'm talking very broad strokes interpretations of love. Firstly, there's the idea that love is a feeling and a distinct universal experience. It's something beyond our control.

And on the other hand, we also see love as a performance, something that you need to work on and towards. So therefore, we do see unrequited love as, you know, whether you see, sorry, whether you see unrequited love as real love depends on whether you see love as a practice or as an emotion. Because if you see it as a practice, unrequited love is,

can never be confused as true love because for you love naturally needs two players and there needs to be some mutual foundation on which to build this temple of care and reciprocation and empathy and giving

However, if you see love as an emotion, as an all-consuming feeling of passion that arises naturally from some deep place in our conscious and our soul, then we can say unrequited love is true love. And it may even be pure love because that feeling can exist in only one person and still be valid. It doesn't need to be reciprocated to still be felt.

I'm really skeptical to call it love because I think calling it that really glorifies the experience and we put other people on a pedestal which is really problematic. We begin to confuse things and move away from what a healthy and stable relationship should be. Yes, you know,

We can call it love if we want, but if it is unrequited love, the real thing. No, it's not. Love can only be felt at its deepest and most profound level, I think, when it is shared. And love is the process of gradually revealing yourself to someone. And although, you know, it can be all-consuming as well, and it's definitely incredibly natural and an organic feeling...

It also needs to be deliberate and must be mutual to be fully felt. But again, like kind of what I was talking with, there is no right or wrong answer. What we expect from love is based on what the relationships around us have taught us, like our parents or our first relationship or our crush. And that really determines how we view love. Okay, that was a bit of a rant. I think maybe it's time to wrap things up.

yeah just I hope you enjoyed that discussion like I said I really got into it I think just like having that time to sit down and reflect on so many past experiences that I've had it really made me realize the own kind of karmic cycle of my relationships and you know feelings that I've had for others and it was really therapeutic to actually read up about why this happens to kind of

give this highly irrational experience more of a logical tinge and more logical input and psychological input as well and yeah just breaking it down it was actually really helpful so I hope that you found it helpful as well if you are in a situation where you're experiencing love that is unrequited you have all my well wishes it's really shit it's really crap and it is really hard to break out of so I hope

yeah, everything works out for you. I hope that, you know, I'm not going to hope that they're the one because they probably aren't. But I hope that you can kind of see the irrationality in it. Maybe this has helped you realize that and just move on. You know, it gets to a point where you kind of have to be realistic with yourself. Like, is this person ever going to reciprocate my feelings? Probably not. And it's time to kind of

buckle up and move on to something else or just move on to being alone because it's kind of better than than begging for attention or begging for feelings from someone who has no intention of giving them to you you know you have everything that you need in yourself so yeah you don't need a man or a woman this is getting very like new age ranty like independent woman vibe but you know what I mean

You can do it all on your own. You don't need to beg someone for the time of day or for a message back or for a reply. So I hope you guys are all doing well wherever you are in the world. If you're in Canberra, we're getting through it. We only had eight cases today, which is so exciting. I never thought I'd say that. But yeah, I hope you guys are all staying safe. Remember to subscribe if you're listening for the first time on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and follow us on Instagram and

Like I said, this idea for this one came from like an Instagram poll I did. So if you want to kind of contribute, it's up to you. So what episodes I get to look into? Yeah, definitely give us a follow. And thanks again for listening in. Take care of yourselves. And remember, the egg doesn't chase the sperm.

Bye.

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