What do you do if the gift or love you gave last week for Valentine’s Day or at any other time wasn’t received well or reciprocated?

You probably feel hurt and maybe even rejected.

Unrequited love is a painful experience and the reasons for it usually fall into three categories:-

  1. I apologise for the bluntness here. They don’t love you. Somebody can not express, sincerely, something that they do not feel
  1. They are not communicating their love in a way that you need it
  1. You are not interpreting their behaviour as love

Before you jump to thinking that your unrequited love is option one, most clients I have worked with over the last 12 years have fallen into options 2 and 3. 

Let’s focus on option 3 to solve your unrequited love.

Unrequited love is usually a miscommunication problem in how each person expresses and receives love.

Realising this as a possibility can help you step outside of the hurt feeling so you can look at it with more perspective.

One way to do this is to observe your partner’s behaviour, it can be helpful to journal your observations. 

Ask yourself this question:-

What are they doing or saying that might be an expression of love?

These can be things spoken, things done such as chores, physical things such as a hug or maybe they give things such as a homemade cake or their time.

If you struggle with this, then another option is to ask them. Instead of being direct and saying ‘do you love me’, if so how? I would suggest a softer approach, for example:-

“I was reading something the other day, that people express their love in different ways and it got me thinking, I thought everybody did it by (insert your way). What do you think? How do you do it?”

This type of question leads to an open exploration of the subject matter and is not received as an attack and hence doesn’t require defending, whereas the direct approach usually does.

Once you have established how your partner communicates their love you will be able to notice it more. Each time you see their ‘love’ behaviour you can tell yourself ‘they love me’ or ‘that’s their love’, this helps to create an association between their ‘love’ behaviour and your love feeling.

This process will take time, so do come back and let me know how you got on if you do the task.