Unrequited Love Transcript
Rhea: So this lesson is about a humungous lesson, but I feel like it’s going to be a humungous lesson for me.
Liz: I feel like I’m always learning every time I outline these things. So the subtitle to this episode is unrequited love, and you did not like that title.
Rhea: No, not at all. It made me feel really uncomfortable actually, because for me, unrequited love is really all about kind of losing self-respect, losing autonomy, losing control and generally being unlovable, so it made me feel very uncomfortable.
Liz: Because when you hear unrequited love, what do you imagine? What do you picture?
Rhea: I see someone who loves but is unloved. They don’t get the love back that they want and so it’s almost like they have become damaged goods for not being loved the way in which they want to be loved by the other person. So yeah, it just makes me feel really uncomfortable, but you insisted it stayed even though I tried to convince you to get rid of it.
Liz: Oh, you are not going to win those arguments with me. It is there for a reason, and as we said in the previous episode, we’re here to challenge meanings and definitions
Rhea: With unrequited love, it feels like you’re very vulnerable, right? But I guess that in relationships, there’s a place for vulnerability usually.
Liz: Well, always. If you’re not vulnerable, then you are not living honestly. You’re not sharing. You’re only giving that outside layer of who you are. This is who I am. Take that. When you’re vulnerable, that means you’re open. It means that you’re emotionally honest.
Rhea: What then is the toxic part when we look at unrequited love?
Liz: The toxic part is lying to yourself about the feelings that are existing – or not – in that relationship, because either you don’t love the person as much as they love you, or they love you more than you love them, and for whatever reason, which ever party isn’t willing to be honest about it.
Rhea: Well, I definitely had that experience and I know a lot of people that I know had that experience as well, you know?
Liz: I think a lot of people have because I think we are dishonest about it. We convince ourselves, we lie to ourselves about our feelings quite frequently.
Rhea: And also feelings can be confusing. I know for me when I was younger, I was kind of in a relationship of repeated cycles with someone, where we were friends and then stuff would happen and things would go badly. I’d walk away. I’d walk back to my friend and the cycle would repeat and repeat and repeat, and every time that cycle repeated, it got more and more toxic.
Liz: And why did it get more toxic?
Rhea: In the sense that, you know, every time a cycle happened, more damage was done to our relationship; more damage was done to our friendship.
Liz: And who do you think was doing the most sabotaging then?
Rhea: Probably me, if I’m very honest, because I think . . .
Liz: I’d hope so.
Rhea: I think I was reading . . . I was projecting my hopes, rather than looking at reality.
Liz: I would say your hopes as much as your expectations
Rhea: Totally, and it’s on both parts. I think it gets really complicated when two people love each other, but maybe not in the same way, or two people love each other but one of them is more prepared to take the risk than the other one. That’s gets really hard, because at that point, I had to walk away eventually because it was making me miserable. It had damaged our friendship totally and there wasn’t much choice left.
Liz: Not if you wanted to retain any amount of self-respect.
Rhea: Yeah, and also by that time, every cycle that passes, you are giving up more and more of yourself by going back.
Liz: Absolutely.
Rhea: So by the time you hit kind of whatever your rock bottom is, there isn’t much of yourself left there, and so to walk away means not walking away from the expectations but walking towards finding yourself again, and that’s really the difference I think. That was definitely my experience, and that’s definitely the experiences that I’ve seen from other people as well.
Liz: Oh, absolutely. Revolving-door relationships are some of the most common that we have. Sometimes it is to our benefit because there is a lesson to learn, and if we’re not learning it the first time, Universe is certainly going to make sure that we have an opportunity to learn it the second, and so on until we think, well if I haven’t learnt the lesson, I’m going to have to learn it another way because this one is no fun anymore.
Rhea: So for example with me, the lesson was to choose myself.
Liz: Absolutely.
Rhea: And until I did that, I was going to keep not choosing myself basically. I really don’t want to call it unrequited love anymore. What is the spiritual . . . ?
Liz: I still like it. But it is.
Rhea: What’s your definition of unrequited love? I mean, what would you say it is?
Liz: It’s when someone doesn’t meet you in the emotional middle, as in they don’t love you as much, or to the same degree as you love them.
Rhea: Okay, so they are just . . . the love is unequal?
Liz: Yes
Rhea: Then if you look at it that way, there’s a fuck ton of unrequited love in the world.
Liz: So much.
Rhea: Because I find that quite funny, considering that everywhere we go and everything we look at has got the word “love” in it, and it’s all about love.
Liz: Yes, but it’s a very immature idea of love. It’s a fantasy love. It’s the love created from books, from story, from fairy tales, from media, sort of a capitalist form of love as well. It’s not real love.
Rhea: Yeah
Liz: By real love, I mean the love you have for yourself, which is unconditional.
Rhea: How long then do you wait for someone to come around? How long do you wait for someone to meet you at that emotional middle?
Liz: Oh, wow. That’s a good question. That’s a heavy one. I think it depends on what you have invested already, in terms of how long have you been together? Is there already a foundation of love that exists, but you’ve found yourselves sort of in this strange, dysfunctional pattern because of some trauma, some job loss, etcetera where you got thrown out, or was it never there in the first place but you had just kind of created it in your mind?
Rhea: Yeah
Liz: If it’s the former, it’s certainly worth trying to come back to it. I think it’s definitely possible because people do fall out of love. People in long-term relationships, partnerships and marriages. It’s not unusual to fall out of love with your partner, but when it’s a powerful, strong connection that is rooted in love, it comes back quite immediately. You just have to remind yourself, oh wait, it’s there. It’s there. You just sort of dip in and there’s that reservoir. Whereas walking away was the only way to save yourself because that was the act of love. The act of love was not to stay, but it was to go.
Rhea: It’s really interesting then. If you say the act of love, right, then by walking away you are no longer unrequited in your love because you are loving yourself.
Liz: Precisely.
Rhea: So actually the unrequited love isn’t you wanting love from someone else, as in you’re staying and sticking around and hoping that they love you, the unrequited love is that you haven’t chosen to love yourself enough to walk away.
Liz: Exactly
Rhea: I agree with that, but I also don’t. I’m loathe to tell people, oh if you are in a situation where you feel that either you are loved by someone else more than you love them, or you love more than you are being loved, the answer is to walk away.
Liz: No, it’s not always worth it, but it takes honesty to figure out with yourself what is it that I’m not getting? Why is that, and can I tell this person I need a bit more here to make this work? Often we’re just making assumptions.
Rhea: So first, it’s kind of like I recognize that this is the situation. I recognize what I want and/or need in order for this situation to not exist in this way. I need to ask for it, and once I ask for it and if I get it, great because that’s also an act of love, because you are standing up for yourself. But if they are unable to give it to me for whatever reason, and then the act of love is to walk away. So actually, it’s a series of acts of love.
Liz: Absolutely!
Rhea: Which then means that it’s not unrequited love. It’s just love misplaced.
Liz: Exactly, and it means choosing yourself, and we are so often told not to put ourselves first.
Rhea: Yeah
Liz: But if you don’t know how to put yourself first, then you won’t ever come first in a relationship, and in a real partnership, both individuals are first.
Rhea: Okay
Liz: There’s no ranking. There’s no hierarchy. It’s harmonious.
Rhea: Okay
Liz: Sometimes somebody’s needs supersedes the others’, if there is something immediate going on. It’s not You/Me, as in I/Thou. I honor you as much as I honor myself.
Rhea: Your needs are just as important as my own.
Liz: Precisely!
Rhea: Okay. Well, I think what you said was very interesting, because that’s not how I have been viewing relationships. From a young age, we’re taught love is sacrifice. From when we look at it historically, it’s the woman stays at home and cooks and sacrifices her wants for a public life in any way, shape or form for her family. That’s how she shows love. The man goes out and works and provides for the family. That’s how he shows love. Love is always measured by sacrifice. Love isn’t measured by “I love you and you love me the same amount as I love me, and we are all loving each other equally and it’s all really great. It’s almost that sexy thing of…you know, I’m trying to think of even a movie scene. There are so many where he kills himself for her.
Liz: Endless. Those are fairy tales.
Rhea: It’s all sacrifice.
Liz: We are conditioned from very young ages over this rather dysfunctional form of love, that these behaviours equate to showing love, being loved, being in love and yet those are some of the worst ways to show love.
Rhea: That’s why I always felt comforted when I was doing what I was doing, because in a weird, fucked up way, it was romantic.
Liz: Yes.
Rhea: I am sacrificing myself for you because then when we finally end up together, the story will be beautiful.
Liz: Precisely!
Rhea: Because I’ve done what I’ve always been told to do, which is sacrifice and put you first, because that’s what a relationship is.
Liz: And then when you wake up, you’ll come around and it all would have been worth it.
Rhea: Exactly
Liz: Yes.
Rhea: Even now I notice that when I’m interacting with men or hearing stories from other friends and everything else, it’s almost like he did this for me. I did this for him. It’s like love is defined by acts of service, not equality, not harmony. If we say relationships are a mirror, which we will go on to talk more about in episodes in the future, and if we say that your needs are just as important to me as my own, and I have a huge degree of self-love, you have a huge degree of self-love so you are attracting a partner who has a huge degree of self-love.
Liz: Very much
Rhea: So they’re loving you as much as they love themselves, which is a fuck ton, you loving them as much as you love yourself, which is a fuck ton…
Liz: Yes
Rhea: Which means that that is the basis of a really healthy relationship.
Liz: Absolutely. Yes.
Rhea: So you will be attracting the relationship that you want when you love yourself as much as you can love someone else
Liz: Yes
Rhea: When I’m making choices that pertain to the other person, to our relationship and to myself that is in my best interest and their best interest equally, what happens is I never feel like I am giving away too much of myself.
Liz: And that’s compromise.
Rhea: Yes
Liz: That’s not sacrifice.
Rhea: And what that means is that I don’t resent. I’m not angry. I’m not bringing negative feelings into that as look at what I’ve done for you, tit-for-tat. You have to do this now for me, because what I noticed in my experience, I was so busy sacrificing the big parts of myself that I was looking for the other person to give me more than they were capable of in other ways. So for example, we would have arguments over tiny things because I wasn’t getting the big things, you know what I mean? But I was looking for those expressions of love because I wasn’t getting them in other ways. I gave you this so you must give me more. You must give me the same. It stops being … we’re not counting anymore.
Liz: It’s not transactional.
Rhea: No, it’s just a connection.
Liz: I remember being with somebody that I thought could be “IT”. Don’t know if he loved me as much as I loved him. I think it was just two very damaged individuals who sought solace in each other’s company, and it’s not that he even treated me poorly. It was all this projecting I was doing, and it was sort of keeping him there because he didn’t want to leave.
Rhea: Well, that’s what’s interesting, isn’t it? Because we are taught that love is suffering. The ones that make us suffer are the ones that we somehow think hold the potential for real love.
Liz: But I was the one suffering.
Rhea: Yeah
Liz: And it did wake me up to the fact that yes, there are some people that come into our lives who are certainly meant to teach us something, and those are our soul mates.
Rhea: So when I came to tell you about all that stuff, obviously when we had our first session together, you told me that me and this person had had a contract.
Liz: Yes
Rhea: What is a contract?
Liz: A contract…well, before we come into our human body, before we are incarnated, our souls make contracts for a variety of relationships.
Rhea: Okay
Liz: Likely with people we have known in previous lifetimes, and sometimes those might have been lifetimes of struggle and so we want a do-over in this lifetime. We need to heal something, a trauma. We choose the parents that we have. We choose the siblings that we have. We choose a lot of things. We choose everything at the end of the day. And often these relationships are meant to bring healing.
Rhea: Can a contract not be fulfilled?
Liz: Oh absolutely, because free will exists so your will cannot supersede the will of another. So if a person doesn’t want to honor that contract, they don’t have to and you can just move on to another one, and we are making contracts throughout our lives, so we are not sort of stuck with the ones that we made before we were incarnated, because if we were, that would be rather unfortunate. We get to exercise our own will.
Rhea: So can that be then the same thing that you have an unrequited love where you actually had a contract with this person but it just wasn’t fulfilled?
Liz: Right. We take this stuff personally don’t we? We think that it’s all about us, because when we are sort of in the vacuum of that relationship, it always begins and ends with us, which in many ways is true, but when it’s up to the choice of another, you can’t always control that.
Rhea: Yeah, and that’s why it feels like this person is meant to be my soul mate. Why aren’t we together?
Liz: Yeah. Absolutely.
Rhea: But in fact, they could be a soul mate, not just in the way you think they are going to be your soul mate.
Liz: Not the forever kind.
Rhea: I see
Liz: Sometimes because we are so willing, so open when we’re in love, and sometimes that’s when the lessons most penetrate, and that’s when we can learn them. So sometimes we get confused . . . we say we learn best from love, and that’s why sometimes when we get hurt, we think love is pain because we have learnt to equate that, but at the end of the day, the lesson isn’t always, oh, I was meant to be with this person forever. I was meant to love this person so I could learn this particular lesson for myself and then move on.
Rhea: Okay. That’s not what we’re always advocating, right?
Liz: Oh no. Not at all.
Rhea: Because sometimes the right decision is to run into the fire and actually learn the lesson.
Liz: Well, it’s certainly a decision. We’re certainly not into right or wrong anything. For those of us, like you and I, we learn best that way so I’d much rather love as many people as I need to learn the lessons, than to just presume that I know everything. For instance for myself with this person, we were never meant for more than what we had. It was more about reminding me that I wasn’t loving myself.
Rhea: And what’s funny actually is what you’re talking about contracts, even if you don’t believe in contracts, you see it echoed in reality, right? I believe I love you and there is something more here, whatever it is, and because I believe that love is sacrifice, I have to sacrifice more of myself to make it work, but because free will cannot supersede my will, if you don’t want to be with me or if you don’t want more from this than you are giving me, I’m not going to get any more, regardless of how much I sacrifice myself.
Liz: Precisely
Rhea: And therefore what I’m left with is a situation where you don’t love me, I don’t love me. There’s no love anywhere, so I’m failing to love myself, and that’s the shadow of unrequited love, but I don’t like that word “failure.”
Liz: Neither do I. We’re never failing. We’re just needing more lessons. We are always in the process of learning something. We are all a work in progress.
Rhea: And we’re all just doing the best we can
Liz: Always.
Rhea: If you’re listening to this and you’re in a situation as we’ve described, kind of forgive yourself for whatever stage of that cycle you are at really, and yes, there’s the opportunity to choose to love yourself, to either ask for what you want, or to walk away if you are not getting what you want.
Liz: Because I think some people do feel that they have equated compromise for sacrifice
Rhea: Okay
Liz: And that’s what I find extremely problematic in certain relationships where the person recognizes a need to walk away, but keeps believing that a simple sacrifice is really the way through, but it’s not.
Rhea: Totally. When I chose myself, when I walked away, when I started loving myself, it gave me the confidence to love myself more so that now, many years on, not only can I be friends with this person, but I can also trust that whatever situation I am flung into, I will make a choice that honours who I am. So it allows me to do a lot more things and have more adventures than I would otherwise, because just as much as you have to have the courage to jump into those things, you have to have the courage to walk away from them when they stop working. Being in a situation of unequal love requires the most courage to walk away, because we’ve been taught so long that that’s the foundation of love, and if you are able to choose yourself over societal view of what love should be, then in the future you can trust yourself to do a whole boatload of other stuff too. The biggest lie we’ve always told ourselves is that a) we can make someone else love us, and b) we know what someone else is thinking, right? You never know if someone loves you . . . really. The only person, the only love you can really know, the only head you can really be in is your own.
Liz: Absolutely
Rhea: And then there is no unrequited love because in loving yourself, you are always loved and that’s what we have kind for been looking for really, and at the beginning of this podcast when I was saying that unrequited love was the person that is loved by no-one, well that can’t exist if you’re loving yourself, because you are always loved by someone then.
Liz: Absolutely, which is eternal and unconditional.