How Can Unrequited Love Help People Find Their Dream Partner?
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
In matters of the heart, unrequited love is far from the most desired experience. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s one of the top five least desired experiences. But one of the many things I’ve learned from unrequited love is that it can give you a better idea of what you’re looking for in a romantic partner.
If, for instance, most or all of your crushes have been unrequited up till now, you have a chance to take a step back and evaluate those crushes. Do they have anything in common? Often, you’ll find that there is a common thread. Often, you’ll find that your love is unrequited because you’re either crushing on people who are incompatible with you or you’re crushing from a place of desperation instead of love.
In this post, we’re going to go deeper into how all your unrequited crushes—and the resulting pain they caused—can help lead you to the one meant for you.
5 Ways Unrequited Love Can Help You Find Your Dream Partner
It can remind you to look for someone compatible with you.
A lot of the time, unrequited crushes result from crushing on people who aren’t actually compatible with you.
What happens is, you see someone you’re attracted to and maybe they do or say something that catches your attention. Maybe they’re especially kind to you or someone else one day. Maybe they give you attention no one else does. Or maybe it’s just the way they smile. Whatever it is, your crush started and, after that, you were sure you had found your soulmate.
While this does happen to some people—and those people are very fortunate indeed—not everyone’s love story goes like this. Not everyone marries the first person they ever crushed on, though some do. But since you’re reading this post, I’m going to guess that has not been your experience.
Instead, you’ve gotten to watch your crush choose someone else or see you as no more than a friend. If this has happened to you multiple times, you can use this to look deeper and find out what it is that you’re really being drawn to.
For every unrequited crush you’ve had, ask yourself, did you really think you and this person would make a good couple or were you just building up a fantasy version of them in your mind that had little to do with their real-life persona?
Unrequited crushes can prompt you to ask yourself these kinds of questions. And the answers, in turn, can help you find someone who will be compatible with you (more on this in #4).It can remind you to look for someone who gives as much as you do.
Often, when in the middle of an unrequited crush, we have a tendency to want to do everything for our crush. If this is someone we’re actually able to interact with, we’ll be there to offer help and support when needed, buy gifts when appropriate (usually), and even run errands when necessary. And we’ll often sacrifice our own needs and happiness to be there for this person.
But if you’ve ever found yourself giving this much to someone you like and you noticed they weren’t giving that much in return, you probably felt awful. You might not have acknowledged the pain to yourself until after you were able to move on, but whenever you did, I know it hurt. It may have even prompted you to question your sanity.
“Why on earth would I give so much to someone who gave so little?” you may have wondered. “Why did I waste so much time being there for someone who was never there for me?”
Those of us who have experienced this type of unrequited love are more than familiar with these questions and many more like them. But don’t dwell too much on the time you wasted on this person or the sacrifices you made for them. Instead, the next time you have a crush, remember to be mindful of your own behavior.
If you find yourself again starting to give more than the other person, walk away before you have too many emotions invested. Wait for someone who gives and sacrifices as much as you do.It can remind you not to waste time or emotions on people who are clearly not interested.
If you’ve ever crushed on someone who you knew had no real interest in you or who barely acknowledged your existence, you’re in good company. I cringe when I think of the number of guys I crushed on who fell into that category. But having experienced so much of this, I learned to move on as soon as I see that the interest isn’t mutual.
If you’ve ever crushed on someone who showed no interest in you, you know how painful that is. Now that you know, let the memory remind you not to repeat that in the future. Don’t dwell on the pain of the memory, though, only the lesson you learned.
Your dream partner will be interested in you. They may be shy about letting you know, but if their interest is genuine, they’ll find ways to let you know.It can teach you to look inward.
Unrequited crushes can teach us so much about ourselves if we let them. It’s true that people can learn about themselves after romantic relationships end, but you don’t have to have been in one to learn about your preferences in romantic matters.
For me, after taking an objective look at several of my past crushes, I realized that I was often drawn to people who practiced religion the way I used to. Now that I see myself as spiritual, I realize a relationship with those people never would have worked. And through introspection, I was able to learn more about what I’m looking for in a partner by discovering more about who I am.
In this post, I list ten questions people can ask themselves to help them find their dream partner. Some of those questions can only be answered after doing some of this type of introspection.
So, if you’ll let them, your unrequited crushes can help you discover who you truly are. And it’s only when you know who you are that you can find someone who’ll love and value the authentic you.It can teach you to wait before confessing your feelings.
I really can’t say why this is, but when I was younger, I was fairly quick to confess my feelings to the person I liked. True, on at least one occasion one of my friends told this person for me. But, one way or another, I let them know. And as a result, I got all sorts of weird reactions.
Most of them were some form of running away, if not immediately then later. But all this confessing taught me to be more cautious with who I confessed to. It taught me that there are people who’ll take advantage of the fact that you like them if you let them.
That’s why I give this advice to people of the INFJ personality type who are thinking about confessing their feelings to a crush. Since we tend to love deeper than most, we have to be even more cautious with our confessions. It’s also why I give this advice to people in general about how long to wait before confessing.
The ultimate decision about when to confess is always up to you. But if you want my advice on this matter, I would say wait to confess until the person you like has shown genuine interest in you or until they’ve proven to be worthy of you and your love.
Final Thoughts
If there’s one thing I hope you take away from this post, it’s this: If you’ve experienced a lot of unrequited love, pause to reflect before jumping into a new crush.
Did you learn any lessons from past crushes that will help you be more cautious about where to place your heart in the future? If so, hold onto those lessons. They’ll help lead you to the one meant for you.
Now it’s your turn. How do you think unrequited love can help people find their dream partner?
~ Ashley C.
P.S. If you’re an INFJ or someone who loves deeply and you would like tips and advice about crushes, unrequited love, and the search for a romantic partner, feel free to join “The INFJ Search for Love” newsletter!
Last updated: December 2, 2024