How do you deal with lifetime-unrequited love and lust?

[KlinkyCoder]

I didn't even have girlfriends until my 20s, but I had crushes on ones in high school but I wasn't naturally as attractive and during those years I was more awkward compared to today. I am starting a phase again where I am missing or nostalgic because it is unrequited, whether it was really love or just lust for the person. A lot of the stuff about HS was probably infatuation only, but that still doesn't change the feeling. I know everybody has moved on too. It's a little depressing even.

[slatyb]

High school? You look them up and realize they aren’t all that. My wife is more today than almost all the women I crushed on in my 20’s, even some of the film stars and rock stars.

[AmandaYVR]

I think it’s perfectly natural to dig into one’s memories, and the vault of the past that perhaps you thought was shut or behind you, when there is the absence of the new, or something newer, or better, to replace them.


Time can heal. But it is not a cure-all; there are no guarantees. Pain and loss are a part of life, sadly. Time does tend to diffuse, scatter but often lessen, the intensity of many feelings, thoughts, and conclusions we have at a particular moment in time - usually the first time we live it. Sometimes if those experiences are so powerful, they burn into our brains, our blood, and our physiology to settle as remnants in the mind - PTSD-like. These are less-easily forgotten, even when one desperately wishes them to be.


New is not necessarily, by default, better. Though neither is always the old. But the firsts, they often become indelible. First crush, first kiss, first… many things. The difficulty, or one of the difficulties of life, is trying to figure out when something means less, or more, than your initial reaction to it. All human beings contain both logic and emotion, and deciphering what we should take away from all experiences is a monumental challenge.


It is possible that your feelings of unrequited love and nostalgia stem from the impulse to remember, and maybe revel, in what was, because it’s what we have knowledge of (remembering is easier than fantasizing, conjuring up, for most people.) Time also gives us perspective. Sometimes we regret we did not act, or did not hold on to something we either had or was in our grasp, however briefly. Or, sometimes, with the benefit of hindsight, perspective, and comparison, we realize that the very thing we once cherished we no longer hold dear.


You may not know if what you are pining for in the past is actually valuable until you meet something you desire more in your future. This is when you will have your answer.


If you find your memories are steeped in regret, you can potentially try to right the wrongs (say, contacting someone through social media, to say hello, catch up, apologize, confess…), or if you feel they are better left where they are, we are, optimally, supposed to learn from our actions, and non-actions - aggression, passivity, etc, and change our future behaviour accordingly. Learning from the past is one option when reliving it is not.

[AmandaYVR]

For me, personally, I don’t pine for any specific person in my past, I know they weren’t right for me. But I do think about the past a lot, about from where I came, what made me into the person I am. There’s a lot of loss and regret there. I feel stupid remembering how I behaved and thought, quite often. Mountains out of molehills, etc. But what I concluded is, as powerful as the experiences were at the time, they paled in comparison to what came later. But that’s just me; that’s not the way it always is for everyone. Some reflect back and conclude that they let something, someone, great slip away. But I benefited from comparison, from the greater perspective. I also concluded that they didn’t have to be as much back then. In my twenties, the experiences themselves were powerful, often because of the intoxicating effect of their novelty. I’ve found the older you get, meaning may not diminish, but what you need and want is what you really have to contend with. If you don’t get what you want when you are young, you can (or should) find some solace in the fact that there is more time ahead of you than behind you, and so there is still a lot of possibility. The more you close off in disappointment, resignation, etc, the less chance and opportunity may exist. Your desire is normal, human. You can try to tamp it down (as a survival mechanism or coping strategy), but you can also think of it as a motivator. Whether it spurs you to revisit the past, or open a door to the future, and while it might just seem like reverie, you can turn these feelings into an action of some sort. Perhaps it is just saying yes more than no, when questions and opportunities arise. Carpe diem, and the like. It may bring sadness, but it can also drive you forward to change something today.