There’s a special kind of guilt that nobody ever speaks about the guilt not of shattering someone’s heart with treason or malice, but of just being unable to love them in the same way they love you. It’s a subtle, insidious pain. One that conceals itself under the cover of pleasant platitudes, positive thinking, and the pernicious cycle of “what if I just tried a little harder?”

As anyone who has ever had a crush can tell you, rejection really sucks. Fewer still describe what it’s like to be on the other side of that imbalance — to be the one who takes more than they give back, and who has to shoulder the burden of that emotional imbalance well after the relationship (or almost-relationship) is over.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Unreciprocated Affection

When someone loves you deeply, perhaps even romantically and you just can’t return their feelings, that doesn’t automatically make you a bad person. It doesn’t seem like that at the time. You’re left wondering why don’t I feel more. What is the matter with me. Second, you don’t want to negatively impact them. If anything, you bend over backwards to be super gentle in your approach, super kind. This is where the guilt becomes unbearable because sometimes, kindness is confused with hope. You’re well aware of that.

You walk an ethical tightrope from the start. You want to be honest but not hurtful, you want to safeguard his feelings but your own. You’re incredible, but I don’t think we have chemistry or you need someone who can really be all in. It reads like a rejection. Rejection, even when it’s wrapped in the gentlest of tones, still stings.

The Pressure to “Feel the Right Thing”

We feel this weird societal pressure to love the person who treats us well. As if love is a commodity: they’re warm, supportive, reliable, in exchange for what emotional profit? We’re told that love is very logical. That attraction can deepen. That if a guy is good to you, you should learn to love him in due course of time.

Alas, love doesn’t actually work that way. Because sometimes there is no trauma in your past, no secret crush on a boy, no unresolved phobia, just a lack of the experience you know you’re supposed to be feeling. Forcing it the other way is taking the express elevator to Uncanny Valley Town much like trying to will yourself to sleep, it’s the harder you try, the more wrong it feels.

You can even attempt to “repair” yourself to be more patient, to agree to more second dates, to picture what a life together might be like. When it doesn’t still click, it’s YOU who feels like the failure. Not because you were at fault, because you were incapable of loving a person who was worthy of all of your love.

Being on this side of unrequited love isn’t without its own special kind of heartbreak in people’s belief that the eyes have turned toward them. No, it’s not the grief of losing love, it’s the grief of never having the chance to give it.

You bear a quiet, persistent guilt, the feeling that you failed someone you never wanted to fail. Replay the times when they gazed at you with dreams and hopes where you wish you had spoken up, wish you had called out their bad behavior, wish you had the confidence to speak truth to power, wish your quietness, your reservation, or your civility didn’t prove to be the dagger. You’re afraid they’ll believe they fell short, but really they just didn’t fit for you.

This type of guilt doesn’t often result in a sense of closure. You might grow apart, or they might leave, but you hold their memory like an uncut diamond, lovely, earnest, not yours to possess..

Why We Need to Normalize This Experience

These are important discussions to have, and we need to keep them going across the skilled trades. The most important thing of all, that you can’t help who you don’t love back and you’re not a monster for that. That emotional connection is not something you can just conjure through force of will or praise or guilt trip. To leave them for the sake of love rather than duty is, ultimately, the kinder choice even when it feels cruel.

We have to extend ourselves a little more grace when we inevitably end up in this position. Here’s the good news, you have permission to not feel the same way as other people. You’ve got all the rights in the world to demand better or at least something different from what you’ve received so far and not to internalize that wish into blaming yourself. Just because your neighbor tweets their enthusiasm, you aren’t obligated to fall in love as well.

A Final Thought

It’s one of those things where people come into your life with a really simple, beautiful, heartfelt offering and yet somehow you just aren’t connecting. That’s not to say they weren’t all outstanding. It isn’t an indictment of you as someone who just doesn’t like beautiful things. That doesn’t mean the route you wanted to take wasn’t possible at all. That’s a difficult truth to accept it’s no less mean one.

It’s true and I have encountered grace under their administration. There is a sweetness in understanding when to pull the plug before resentment sets in. The most unloving thing you can do is continue to act like you love someone, hoping they’ll start loving you back.

The worst part is that you mourn them not for the fact that you’ve lost them, but because they chose to love you with a fullness in which you seldom felt loved. It wasn’t the lost romance you longed for, but the safety of being known, selected, and cherished. It’s not always love you miss, but the ease of being observed that way with such gentility. You miss the ideology of yourself that was reflected back at them, the one who is more soft, more lovable. Even if you never sought their heart in the first place, the loss of never being gazed upon like that again stings just as much.

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