Can You Be Friends With Someone You Love?

25.09.2017

Love Unrequited: How to Deal with It in the Best Way?

Quite often we hear “unrequited love”. But what is unrequited love anyway? Unrequited love is one-sided love, where one in love never discloses his or her feeling to the one he or she is in love with. Sometimes the beloved may know about the feelings of his or her admirer but continues to reject it. It is hard to define whether unrequited love is love indeed or just a mere infatuation, but no one really cares about the definition of it, as whenever you come across this feeling, the main question that occupies your mind is “how to get over unrequited love?”.

For many of us, getting over unrequited love is a very tough task. Because, if you don't get over your unrequited love it will haunt you for the rest of your life. No matter whether you were rejected by your love interest or you never disclosed your real feelings to him or her, you'll be left unsatisfied. A lot of people never manage to get involved in a romantic relationship because of the unrequited love, while others are dishonest because they try to find their unrequited obsession in their new partners. Thus, getting over unrequited love is crucial for your future relationship. In order to help you in this hard task, here are some tips on how to get over unrequited love.

1. Treat It As Physical Pain

Your heart has been broken, and there’s a real physical sensation of pain. Even if you know that your heart can’t really break, you’re feeling like it’s doing exactly that. There’s a physical pain in your chest, and the rest of your body feels bruised and aching as well. There is a reason why we call it a “broken heart”, because your mental pain may cause you physical pain, so treat it as a physical pain.

Start with acknowledging that you’ve been injured and you need to take care of yourself. You need to be gentle and kind and nurture yourself just the way you would if you had a physical illness. This doesn’t mean you should go to bed and waste away. It actually won’t help. But whether you’re at work or school, go easy on yourself. Don’t expect yourself to turn in a peak performance. But by plugging away, putting one foot in front of the other, all the time acknowledging that you’re feeling hurt and sad, you’ll gradually get your life moving forward.

2. Seek Advice From People Who Suffered The Same

Whenever you experience some 'traumas' that have something to do with romance, you start thinking that you are the only one. But, according to a recent social research, 98% of us have suffered from unrequited love at one time or another. One of the problems with this kind of rejection is that it’s not enough that you feel sad, lonely and broken-hearted. It also makes you feel bad and ashamed. As a result, you start to worry that there is something deeply wrong with you.

You start to ask yourself painful questions, like how does this person, whom you value so much, see in you that it makes them want to stay away from you? You start to soothe yourself with food—a pint of ice cream, a bag of cookies—and then you feel even worse. Oh yes, you say to yourself, I’m a sloth, I'm a pig, that’s why I’m not lovable.

But if this happens to other people—many of them are smart, attractive and very lovable—then it’s not about you not being good enough. It’s maybe about this not being the right moment for the two of you, or about you not being the right partner for your love interest.

3. Become Friends With Your Love Interest

That is one of the dumbest decisions that one can make, but for some people it is really the solution. Why it works and why it doesn't? This point deserves a deeper exploration.

Being Friends With Someone You Love: Is It Really Possible?

As we've already mentioned, becoming friends with your love interest can work for some of us. But can you be friends with someone you love? Let's see why it works and why it doesn't work.

1. Why It Works?

Trying to be friends with someone you love may work in two cases. The first one is that you continue to hope that you will become lovers someday. Actually, it may work, but this is how to be friends with someone you love. You need to learn certain tricks on how to get out of the friendzone, which we will discuss later, in order to turn friends into lovers. Another “how to be friends with someone you love” is actually becoming friends with your love interest. How do you stay friends with someone you love otherwise? In other cases, you are most likely lying to your friend (love interest) or you're lying to yourself. Most often you are lying to both.

But the main reason for staying friends with someone you love is when your love interest is an interesting person per se. When you find your communication interesting you won't have any problems with getting over unrequited love.

2. Why It Doesn't Work?

Can you be friends with someone you love when you are dishonest? Basically, you can, but most likely it will have disastrous consequences. Sooner or later your dissatisfaction with your role in your love interest's life will grow. The fact that you want to be more than just a friend to your love interest will haunt you all the time and you won’t be able to get over it. Meanwhile, your loved one may have a romantic relationship. You will probably try to break that relationship. Your love interest, trusting you as a friend, is more likely to discuss his or her relationships, and you will use every possibility to set him or her against his or her current partner. As a result, you can manage to ruin your beloved one's relationship, but you won't gain anything. Just the fact that you are hanging out for quite a long time doesn't mean that your love interest will consider you as something more than just a friend.

Another case when being friends with your beloved one doesn't work is when you find that your beloved one is unreliable and, what is worse, absolutely not an interesting person. The only thing that was holding you with this person was your love or infatuation. When your romantic feelings towards this person fade, you find that there is nothing that holds you together. Still, this case is the most positive one, as you just leave this relationship without having hard feelings about it. Moreover, sometime later you most likely will laugh about it.

Friendzoned: Is It Possible To Cure It?

Before figuring out how to get out of the friendzone, we need to find out what does friendzone mean? Actually, friendzone means that your love interest wants you to be nothing more than his or her friend. So, let's check out the possible ways to get out of the friendzone.

1. Don't Get Friendzoned

How not to get friendzoned? Don't act that you are okay with being just friends. That's the only way that you can mess this situation up. Show that you are interested in something more than just being a friend. Mind that it is hard to get out of the friendzone, so no matter how painful facing the fact that she or he is simply not into you can be, it’s better to accept it than becoming friends with that person.

2. Keep Cool and Accept the Situation

In case if you decided to accept being friendzoned, there are several rules to follow. Don’t beg him or her to give you a chance, ever. He or she made a conscious decision not to be anything more than friends with you. You must play with the irrational, illogical side of your love interest's personality. You’ll do much better if you start putting less focus on your beloved one and more focus on you.

3. Try to Improve Yourself

Nobody is perfect, so there is always much room for improvement. It gives us hope as well, right? Start looking your best. Go to the gym and stick to a healthy diet. Also, don’t forget about the intellectual side of things. Try to be a hot and interesting person. If you feel more confident about yourself, your love interest will probably notice it. Remember, people love self-confidence and after all, the special person you want is just another person.

4. Spend Time with Your Beloved One Doing Regular Things

No candles, romantic dinners, watching sunset, listening to romantic music at your place, etc. Just invite her to do “friendly” things with you. After all, this is exactly what your beloved one wanted, right? Go out and do the things you would do yourself anyway, like going out to buy new clothes and stuff like that. Shopping is actually a good idea for 2 reasons. Your love interest will be happy to help you and you will have a good opportunity to ‘accidentally’ show him or her some of your finely worked out body if you managed to improve yourself. Every situation that leaves some space for physical contact and leaves your love interest thinking about you is helpful in this situation. Always try to emphasize your sexuality but in a very polite, seemingly accidental way.

5. Flirt with Your Love Interest

Never forget the importance of sexual attraction. Start teasing your love interest and giving him or her compliments, but avoid elaborate, sophisticated ones. For example, perfume is a safe subject. If your beloved one chooses to wear perfume, it means he or she likes the scent, so it’s safe. It’s also a very sensual compliment.

Conclusion

As you can see, in case of unrequited love you have three options. You can either give up and try to heal your wounds or you can try becoming friends with your love interest in a secret hope that one day you will become romantically involved. The third variant is the most honest one. If love or infatuation is not the only link between you and your love interest, and you really find your beloved an interesting person, you can become true friends. It is up to you to choose which variants fits you both.