Unrequited Love

“Unrequited love is a trip.”  Actually, my former colleague used a pejorative description of a female dog.  Her words capture the deep-seated and enduring frustration that may people feel when they have invested themselves in a love relationship that fails.  It is very hard to give time, money, talents and emotional energy to marriages and relationships that do not work out.  Those types of investments cannot be written off or recouped in any way.  Yet, we grapple with the hard reality of having to move on in life. The experience of “unrequited love” teaches us a lot about ourselves.  It empowers us to know “real” love when we see.  Mostly, it ought to teach us how to become better givers of love rather than takers of life’s most precious commodity.

Loving a broken person is the surest route to unrequited love.  Someone who faces profound internal challenges to demonstrate love equal to the definition of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.  Such an individual must first resolve his or her inner brokenness.  Depending upon how deeply disturbed the individual is, she may be incapable of reciprocity.  To love her means to recognize that although she may have grown to an adult age, she possesses the emotional maturity of an adolescent. 

Try as hard as she may, she will not be able to maintain the selflessness and unconditional giving that makes a love relationship thrive.  Her brokenness will force her to think of herself and her needs, first and foremost.  In actuality, she views the relationship as a means with which to find the healing that she lacked heretofore.  She gives to it as long as it returns a dividend toward her process of inner healing and quest for wholeness.  Her mate, try as hard as he may, will not be able to heal her.  Whatever she receives from him will be reduced by her self-centered focus and fears.  He must unabashedly accept that he is the giver of unrequited love.

Only the unconditional love of God in Christ can heal a broken individual.  Notwithstanding sincerity, commitment and a longsuffering attitude, no human love is capable of healing an incomplete person.  Such a person possesses a cleft palate personality in which the triangle of God’s love, self love and acceptance and the ability to love others did not fully form.  The vast chasm can only be filled with God’s sacrificial love in Christ.  Therefore, anyone who is in a relationship with such a person will be disappointed ultimately.  Giving continuously, appeasing whims, ignoring personal needs and hoping against hope are the signs of unrequited love.  They are the fruit of a rotten tree whose roots never grew deeply enough to produce good fruit.  All the same, God’s love is the only remedy to the sick sin soul of a broken person.

The givers of unrequited love must guard against bitterness and disillusionment.  It is easy to resent the people to whom we gave so much.  Naturally, we feel duped and taken for granted.  However, what else can we expect from someone who is so profoundly troubled?  Also, our egos yearn for the satisfaction of revenge.  We want those ingrates to feel the pain that we feel.  We want them to be on the short end of love.  Furthermore, we are tempted to retaliate against them by harming them in any way that we can.  In time, our thirst for vengeance will poison our hearts.  We will not know love because we will refuse to believe that it is possible.

The apostle of love, John, offers a few immortal words in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”  Here, the evangelist speaks of the perfect love of God in Christ.  It is perfect because it does not fail.  God is the origin of this love.  Since He is perfect, then it is perfect.  Relying upon the certainty of this love is the surest cure for all victims of unrequited love.  Knowing that God loves us despite our personal brokenness should aid us in finding forgiveness for those incomplete persons whom we loved.  The “blessed assurance” of God’s irrefutable love and consideration for us empowers us to heal as we forgive.  More significantly, it motivates us to search, under His guidance, for love until it is manifested in a human relationship.