Unrequited love comes in many forms.

by Susan Reinhardt . photo by Rimas Zailskas

Is there any feeling that produces more angst and woe than being on the wrong end of unrequited love?

I remember at 14, falling hard as a cinderblock for a tall, tanned lifeguard who was four years my senior. I scribbled his name in all my journals, continuing to pine over him for seven long years.

He’d toss me crumbs of hope. “Hey, Mule Ears,” he’d say, and give my wayward ears a flick with his finger. Or he’d sort of pet me and say, “You’re just as cute as a speckled pup.” He dated a long line of my friends but never asked me out. Even though I had boyfriends during this seven-year infatuation, I never got over this man. Not until he finally asked me out. Then, I decided he really wasn’t what I’d dreamed up in all those years of agonizing fantasy.

The thing about unrequited love is that for some, it’s addictive. We, as humans, are typically attracted to what’s hard to get. But the line must somewhere be drawn from a healthy relationship of mutual love to this disturbing pattern of seeking what can’t be sought.

One of my best male friends always chooses, and is addicted to, love he can’t have. He is a dead ringer for Hugh Grant, super talented, fit, fun and has never married. At age 50, he’s still chasing those “Jeannies” in a bottle. “I did realize that in a perverse way, I kind of relish the unrequited love thing,” he says. “The pain and suffering is part of the pursuit and romance. I’ve had three in my lifetime, and I basically just sob on my pillow.”

Another woman, successful even in a floundering real estate market, says her most recent experience with “return to sender” love started with flirty texting. This led to great conversations with a man over the phone and through e-mail, but for some reason, he would not meet her face-to-face. “This has been going on for more than a year,” she said recently. “But no. No action.”

Irene Matiatos, a psychologist from the Asheville area, says such relationship patterns form via our attachment to parents. “If we have a parent who in some way isn’t there for us—say one parent has migraines or alcoholism and isn’t really there—that’s the model we have. That’s how we learn what love is about. It’s the blueprint for our lives.”

In other words, we often want what we didn’t have.

Her advice for those who seem to be magnets for partners who can’t love equally is to see a therapist. “If you see the pattern more than twice, there’s a problem,” Matiatos says.

Sometimes it’s not that a couple has trouble sustaining romance. It’s a matter of some small but important details in the situation—like the other person’s marital status. Jennifer, an area nonprofit worker who didn’t want her last name revealed, was in love with her ex-husband’s best friend and says she had been so since she was a teenager. They even had a brief tryst, she says, but she decided to try to keep her marriage going.

Years passed, and recently, she heard from him again, through Facebook (of course), a hot source for many hook-ups. He asked her if she ever really loved him or thought about him over the years. “I told him yes, but since he’s married right now, I can’t be more than friends. We are still Facebook friends, but I think about him all the time. I’m careful to be proper, so here I am, still missing him, and I dare not tell him.”

If you have relationship issues or subjects you’d like Susan to address, contact her at susan@susanreinhardt.com.