When I was a teenager, I had a massive crush on a boy. Let’s call him Caleb. He was the most handsome boy I’d ever seen, and I was convinced he was the love of my life. Looking back now, I realize that crush on Caleb was the start of me becoming the poster child for unrequited love. It was the first chapter in a long, painful pattern of chasing people who didn’t choose me back.
Like so many people who’ve loved someone that didn’t love them back, I ended up learning more about myself than I ever expected. But at the time, I didn’t see it that way. At the time, it felt electric, consuming and painful… but also kinda magical.
Caleb was from Fiji, with smooth brown skin, short curls, a strong, perfect build, and a smile that went on for days. He was fun, flirty, and athletic. He was also dating my friend Sarah. Every day, I got ready for school with Caleb in mind, slicking my hair back into a bun and carefully gelling my fuzzy fringe to cover my forehead acne. By lunchtime, the fringe would be stiff and dry, sticking straight out like a visor and revealing my pizza face. I’d feel cute for half the day until the gel betrayed me. Caleb didn’t seem to notice.
Every hour, our class would change rooms, and everyone would rush to grab the best desks. I always waited, hovering near the back, watching where Caleb sat so I could increase my chances of ending up near him. It didn’t matter that he was Sarah’s boyfriend. I figured if I could just get a smile or a little attention every now and then, I’d be on top of the world.
I lived for the classes where Caleb ended up next to me. Sometimes we’d pass notes, giggling and hoping the teacher wouldn’t catch on. Other days we’d just talk the whole time, barely pretending to get any work done, like we were in our own little world. Or so I thought.
My crush was obvious to everyone but me. Anytime someone asked, I’d deny it with wide eyes and moral outrage. I was a good girl, and an even better friend. I would never like Sarah’s boyfriend! But classmates would whisper things like, “He pays more attention to you than to Sarah!” Which left me feeling part ashamed, part secretly thrilled. Whether Sarah noticed or not, she never brought it up. So we just carried on as if all was good in the hood.
A year after Caleb and Sarah became official, and after countless flirtatious classes between him and me, they finally broke up. My heart soared! Maybe it was finally my time! But a few months later, he started dating my best friend Alana. They were on-again, off-again for the rest of high school and into our university years.
He never did choose me.
And so begins my story of loving people who wouldn’t love me back.
What Is Unrequited Love and Why We Chase It
Unrequited love is the experience of loving someone who doesn’t love you back. Sometimes they don’t love you back at all. Other times, it’s just not in the way you’d hoped. It can look innocent, even charming, in our teenage years. But for many of us, the pattern follows us into adulthood where the hurt runs deeper and the stakes feel higher.
I’ve talked to many girlfriends about this, and the truth is, we chase unrequited love for all kinds of reasons. Most of them are completely beneath our awareness at the time. Sometimes we mistake intensity for intimacy. Sometimes we think love has to be earned; that if we can just be beautiful enough, interesting enough, perfect enough, sexy enough or conservative enough, then maybe they’ll finally choose us. And sometimes, we chase it simply because the longing feels familiar.
In my case, I came to realize that underneath the pattern was a deep need to prove how loving I was. I thought maybe my love just wasn’t good enough yet. That if I could accept a little more disregard, show how loyal and steady I could be, stick around long enough, that eventually love would be returned to me in the same way.
I kept showing up, hoping that my effort would speak louder than their indifference. That my devotion would eventually be recognized. I stayed in situations long past their expiration date, not because they felt good, but because I believed love meant enduring. That if I could just hold on a little longer, they’d finally see me. Finally choose me and love me back in the way I wanted. It never happened.
When love isn’t returned in the way we want, it’s heartbreaking. And for people like me, the “non-quitters”, we just keep trying. We keep hoping that if we give more, love harder, try better, they’ll finally see us.
I began to see that my craving for love and intimacy wasn’t limited to romance. It showed up in my friendships too. Growing up, we moved every few years for my dad’s work. That meant landing in new schools where friend groups were already formed. I had to learn to read the room quickly, pick up the vibe, and insert myself into connection before the next inevitable move tore me away.
I would fixate on the friend or friend group I admired most, then try my hardest to be invited in. And sometimes I was invited to the party or included in the sleepover, but I rarely got to experience the kind of deep belonging I was hungry for. I was thirsty for intimacy and true connection, even as I tried to play it cool, to give off the impression of the unfazed, low-maintenance girl.
As I grew into adulthood, that thirst didn’t go away. I longed for deep and lasting bonds, and the kind of slow friendships that felt like home. So when I met someone and felt that instant click, I poured myself in. I’d get swept up in the spark, convinced we were soul-level besties in the making. But then came the crash. Usually in the form of one-sided effort. Me trying to make plans and following up. Me holding on while they drifted away. I started chasing people hard, begging them, silently or not, to stay, to change, to want to be with me. I was addicted to the fantasy of turning things around. If I could just get them to choose me, it would finally prove I was loving and lovable.
But it’s all just smoke and mirrors. Because in the end, unrequited love is a mirror. A mirror of unmet needs. And of a disconnection from my own being.
What I’ve come to learn, after almost three decades of misplaced longing and desire, is this: Unrequited love isn’t just about another person not choosing you. It’s about the parts of you that don’t know how to choose yourself.
And more profoundly, it’s the ache that arises when we’re disconnected from the divine source of love that already lives within us. But, we’ll get there in a minute…
Related: How to Love Yourself: From the Diary of a Self-Loving Woman
Emotional Lessons from One-Sided Love: What Unrequited Love Taught Me About Life (And Myself!)
Years ago, during one of the most heart-wrenching seasons of my life, just after my divorce and while navigating the pain of unrequited love in two different places, I began declaring a single line every day:
“May the power of love illuminate, dissolve, and dissipate all wrong thoughts and ideas that block me from experiencing love, peace and happiness.”
It’s a passage from my favorite metaphysical book, The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn. When I said “love,” I didn’t mean romantic love. I meant true love. The quality of love that brings clarity and joy.
I needed the reminder, daily. A way to stay rooted in a loving heart and a clear mind. To notice when unloving thoughts were hijacking my peace and dragging me into self-pity. I also needed something to ground me in a season that felt like it was sucking the life out of me. My emotional world was spinning, and I felt completely at the whim of longing, rejection, and grief.
At that point in my life, I knew a lot of things intellectually. I knew I had to love myself even when others didn’t. I knew I had sovereignty over my emotions and my choices. I knew that if I had to chase love, it probably wasn’t love at all. And yet, my body felt addicted to the longing. Like it hadn’t gotten the memo my mind had already learned.
So, like the good student I am, I threw myself into the work. I studied, journaled, meditated, rolled around the floor in tears, danced and raged. I let the pain become a portal to healing. I gave language to a pattern of relating that had haunted me for years. I began to understand the deep roots of my addiction to one-sided love.
And as I opened to it, realization after realization hit me like waves. Love began to move in me, not as something I needed from another person, but as something I could feel and access from within. It became, in the truest sense, a dance with God. And my internal world began to change.
That’s not to say I do this love thing perfectly now. I still catch myself, every now and then, subtly pushing my way into people’s lives, trying to earn a place. But now, I recognize it quickly. I remember who I am. I know how to hold myself gently. I know how to soothe the parts of me that still try to buy into the idea that love lives somewhere out there, beyond me.
Here’s what unrequited love has taught me about life:
1. Unmet Desire is a Master Teacher
Desire can be a beautiful thing when it mobilizes us toward a vision of connection, creativity, or calling. But when our desires aren’t met, especially in love, they can turn ugly. Unmet desire becomes a harsh spotlight on the gap between what we deeply want and what we’re actually receiving. And if we’re not conscious, we start living inside that gap.
For so much of my life, I felt frustrated when others didn’t show up for me in the way I showed up for them. Devastated when they didn’t meet me in desire. And in some cases, completely undone by emotional pain. I’ve had moments of grief so overwhelming I could barely eat or create, let alone enjoy life.
But as I grew in self-awareness, things started to shift. I started to see how outrageous it actually was that I could be thrown into despair by the behavior of another person. That someone else’s inability to love me back could dictate my entire emotional reality.
So I turned inward. I began examining my unmet desires for clues. What were they trying to tell me? What did I believe I was missing and why did I think another person could give it to me?
My unmet desires asked me to investigate what love really is. They asked me to distinguish between attachment and true connection. To see that attachment clings, demands, and fears loss, while true connection honors both people as whole. It doesn’t require chasing, or ask you to prove your worth or devotion.
Unmet desire also taught me to slow down and sit with longing as though it were something sacred. It showed me where I’d been trying to outsource my sense of wholeness. Where I believed I needed someone else’s love in order to feel safe, seen, or valuable. It invited me into a deeper relationship with myself. One where I no longer abandoned my needs or gave away my power for crumbs of affection. One where I could feel desire fully without letting it control me.
2. Longing is a Portal to God Within
I’ve heard all the usual spiritual advice about love: “Free yourself from desire.” “Love yourself first.” “Become one with your aloneness.” And it always made sense intellectually. But like a lot of people, I didn’t fully get it. To be honest, it just felt like one more thing I had to perfect in order to be “ready” for true love. Like—cool cool cool, so now you’re telling me I have to master solitude and become an enlightened self-loving monk before anyone will truly love me?
Meanwhile, I was watching plenty of imperfect people being loved splendidly, or so I thought. And still, my longing for love remained. Then one day I came across a line in an Osho book that hit differently. It said something like:
“When I say be free of all desire, I mean be free of all objects of desire. Then there’s just pure longing. That pure longing is Divine. That pure longing is God.”
Phew. Sure, I read it after a few years of sitting on my balcony, morning and night, staring into the sky, surrendering to nothingness, and letting myself feel everything. So maybe I was finally primed to receive it. But at that moment, it clicked. I understood what none of the spiritualized “love yourself first” advice ever quite managed to convey.
My longing wasn’t something to eliminate and it wasn’t wrong. That ache I’d spent so much of my life trying to fix, suppress, or aim at someone else, was actually sacred. It was something to honor. It was never about getting love from someone else. It was about reconnecting to the love that already lived inside me.
I suddenly understood that longing is just a desire to feel full. To feel alive with love! To experience joy bubbling up from within me, unexpectedly and sometimes for no reason at all. Just because I’m alive. Just because life is sweet!
These days, when longing rises up, I take a minute to pause. I sit on the ground or on my balcony and let myself feel it fully. I don’t channel it toward a person or a particular outcome, and I don’t push it away. I just let it move. Sometimes, it rises and dissolves softly. Other times, it alchemizes into joy that lifts me off the floor and into dance. Or out the front door and into conversation with strangers I meet randomly on the sidewalk.
This is the alchemy of longing: When we stop outsourcing it and turn it inward, it grows and then transforms into gratitude and presence, and the kind of love that doesn’t need a place to land, or a person to attach to, in order to know it’s real.
3. Becoming a Sovereign Woman Means Choosing Myself, First
I used to call myself a “ride or die”—the kind of woman who sticks around no matter what. Loyal, devoted, and unwavering. But I’ve learned that loyalty, when misplaced, is just self-abandonment in disguise.
I always thought that if I loved someone hard enough, declared my love and stayed long enough, sacrificed myself fully like a martyr, that they’d eventually choose me. Not just choose me… bow down in reverence. Maybe become my ride or die.
I would sacrifice my holiest desires for true love and companionship, shrinking myself to meet them where they were. Abandoning what I wanted in the name of love. Whatever you want, I’d say. Whatever makes you comfortable.
It’s not crazy that I thought this was love. We’ve been conditioned, as women, to believe our lives exist for the comfort and care of others. That our worth lies in how much we can give, how much we can forgive, and how much we’re willing to go without. But if I’m really honest, it never felt particularly good to love in this way. It never felt good to move in ways that signaled to others that their desires and timelines would always take precedence over mine. That my longings and my life could wait.
I’ve learned that when I don’t choose myself first, I take myself for granted. And that’s not love at all. True love doesn’t require me to diminish myself. It doesn’t ask me to prove my devotion. True love begins with reverence for the self. And when I lead from that place, I move in ways that invite others into right relationship with me. The type of relationships that are grounded in respect, joy, and mutual concern and consideration. Where my love is received as a gift, not taken for granted.
Last week, I was in the Bahamas on vacation. I met a man who looked at me, with sincere eyes, and said, “You’re not the type of woman who is chosen. You’re the one who does the choosing.” I smiled to myself, thinking about everything I’ve walked through to get to this place of sovereignty, where others now feel it in me. It’s true, that we all do our choosing. But what a gift it is to have finally relaxed into mine. To have come home to the God within.
These days, I anchor into myself more and more, choosing to honor who I am, and holding the longing in my heart without outsourcing it. I’ve learned to be anchored instead of attached. Choosing myself doesn’t make me harder, or colder, or less loving. It just means that after a lifetime of desperately wanting to belong to everyone else, I’ve accepted that I belong to myself first.
This acceptance has resulted in a kind of joy and peace that makes me more discerning, more intentional and self-honoring. It doesn’t close me off, it slows me down and opens me up to the kind of love that’s steady, sacred and real.
Related: How I Learned to Choose Myself First (And How You Can Too)
4. Healing Requires Us to Surrender to What Is
Letting go with grace might be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. How do you let go of your hopes and dreams for a person you deeply care about? Especially when they’ve only ever treated you with kindness? Especially when you still think they’re the bee’s knees? Or, even when they’ve treated you poorly?
Surrendering to what is asks us to stop reaching for what could be. To stop projecting into a future we’ve scripted in our minds. It asks us to meet this moment as it is without flinching. To accept people exactly as they are, even when what they want is in direct opposition to what we desire.
Healing isn’t about pretending we don’t care. It’s about learning to sit with ourselves and to feel the ache of longing as it moves through our bodies, and not make it wrong. To witness our unmet desires as teachers that guide us back to the deep well of love within.
I know how hard it is to let go, to surrender the story you wanted to live, and to bless a person’s path even when it no longer includes you. But I’ve started to accept the moment exactly as it is, recognizing this as the gateway to emotional freedom. Acceptance of what is brings me back into harmony with myself and creates space for peace.
Letting go doesn’t have to be loud or dramatic. It doesn’t require a final conversation or a fiery declaration. It happens silently and inwardly when we stop fighting reality and start honoring the wisdom of what’s unfolding, even when it breaks our hearts. In that surrender, I’ve found a sense of lightness, liberation and a gratitude for what was, and for the version of myself I finally get to return home to.
5. True Love is Never Unrequited
I’ve come to learn that there’s a kind of love that exists all on its own. It’s not addressed to anyone in particular and it doesn’t need to be returned. It just is. It’s like a still pool or a well that springs up and overflows from the deepest part of our being.
This kind of love is effortless. It doesn’t force or try to grasp onto anything. It soothes the spirit and fulfills the longing. It’s the kind of love we can share with others without demand, without expectation, and without needing anything back. It’s enough all on its own.
That’s not to say the desires of my heart have vanished. I still long, one day, to be loved fully and to be cherished by someone who sees me completely. But I’ve learned that if I have to demand that love be returned, it was never really love to begin with. True love is when it comes back to you without needing to be asked. That is a gift.
These days, I trust that when true love in another person finds its way to me, I’ll know. Because I’m ready to receive it. And it won’t be because I’ve proven myself, or because I’ve earned it. It’ll come because I’ve finally remembered that there’s nothing I need to do to be worthy of love. I just need to be me.
The Hidden Gift of Unrequited Love
Years later, Caleb found me on Facebook. “Ah, Caleb Johnson,” I joked. “Love of my high school life…” “Really?! You were MINE!” he replied. Uff.
Although he never chose me, at least not in the way I wanted, what he gave me, along with the men who followed him, was something far more lasting: an experience of longing that ultimately led me home to myself. My spiritual journey toward emotional sovereignty has been shaped by the men I’ve loved, and by the pain of not being fully loved in return.
Finding meaning in heartbreak has meant rewriting the narrative of not being chosen and instead realizing that choosing myself is one of the most legendary love stories of my life. I’m so grateful for the hidden gift of unrequited love. For the transformation of longing into something sacred. And for the realization that love, in its truest form, is not something we chase, it’s something we become.
I know that one day I’ll meet the person who’s ready to join me in that kind of love. Arms and heart wide open. Not because I proved my worth, but because we’re both ready to meet in that sacred place where love is free, fearless, and mutual.
If you’re in the thick of unrequited love right now, I want you to know that I see you. I know how much it hurts. And I also know this moment holds the power to lead you into a love more profound, more liberating, and more Divine than anything you’ve ever known.
If you allow the longing to turn inward, if you let it guide you, you might just discover that what you’ve been searching for was always inside you.
What lessons has unrequited love taught you? I’d love to hear your story in the comments below.
Ps. Want to begin your journey to a slower, more loving way of living? Sign up for the free 5 Days of Slow audio course here.
pruppi
so beautifully written!
Candis Williams
Thank you for your kind words! And for reading!