Friday, November 13th, 2009...12:16 pm
How to get over unrequited love
As Sarah disembarked from the plane, I stood holding a red helium balloon. This was an innocent time, before 9/11, when the non-ticketed could still meet passengers as they disembarked from the plane. She saw me, smiled, and came close. “Chris!” “Sarah!” We hugged. “Chris, I’d like you to meet someone. This is Tom.” From behind her, stepped Tom. My smile froze. Tom? I didn’t know Tom was going to be here. I thought it was just going to be her.
Alone.
I hand her the balloon, Tom looking on. “Welcome to L.A.!” “Oh, thank you.” She gets a nervous look in her eye. Tom and I shake hands, and we exchange pleasantries. We start walking back to my car. Five minutes later, a porter comes running up with a balloon. “Welcome to L.A.!” he beams. We go another couple hundred feet. A shoeshine man runs up with a balloon. “Welcome to L.A.!” Sarah gives me a quizzical look. As we walk, more and more people people come up and give her a balloon, each wishing her a warm welcome to L.A. She eventually ends up with a dozen balloons in her arms. “What’s going on here?!?”
Verliebtheit was what was going on. Or forelskelse, enamoramiento, or влюблённость. In English, it’s been called “love madness” or “oneitis” Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term limerence to identify it. Limerence is defined as “…an involuntary cognitive and emotional state of intense romantic desire for another person, enduring for months, years and even a lifetime. It’s characterized by intrusive thinking and…can be experienced as intense joy or as extreme despair, depending on whether the feelings are reciprocated.”
Sarah and I had met in college, in Lambda Nu’s computer cluster. Back then, Sarah was dating Adam, one of my dorm-mates in Lambdu Nu. While she was waiting for Adam, she would frequently come to the computer cluster and chat me up. She seemed warm and nice, but she was a feminist studies and film studies major–I didn’t think we had much in common.
We graduated, and lost touch for a while. I moved to Rancho Cucamonga, to work for 21st Century Medicine, a biotech firm specializing in organ cryopreservation. I was 25. One weekend, I decided to go visit my friend Carly who was working in the Sweet Hall graphics department at Stanford. As I wandered among the cubicles, I saw a familiar face. Sarah? Yes, it was her! We chatted about half an hour, and agreed to hang out later in the weekend.
We went hiking around campus and had dinner together. After dinner, we stayed up late into the night, just talking. I fell asleep on her couch. We clicked!
I returned to Rancho Cucamonga. I could not stop thinking about her! I wrote her a passionate email revealing my love for her. Her first response was short and formal. So I wrote her more emails. Each of her responses was shorter and colder. Eventually, she told me to stop contacting her any more.
I was crushed. And embarassed.
A year passes. Every day, I thought about her.
After a year, I email her a brief note, apologizing for my previous behavior. She responds positively. Subsequently, we talk on the phone and email each other fairly frequently.
Then one day, she says she’s coming to L.A. for her website launch, and could I pick her up from the airport…
Of course, I knew that Sarah and Tom were dating, but I didn’t know how serious it was. I thought that if only I could impress her enough, she would dump Tom, and date me. So I tried to think of something that would be sweet, and novel, and would impress her. Hmmm, balloons? But that’s too traditional and not particularly impressive. I remembered she had previously expressed her distaste for L.A.–she thought it was an artificial, unwelcoming city. I know, I’ll prove to her that L.A.’s truly a welcoming city by having employees in the airport hand her the balloons, and say “Welcome to L.A.!”
So that’s what I did.
The ride to the hotel with her and Tom was rather awkward.
And, of course, we didn’t get together.
Something about Sarah flipped a deep switch in my brain on that day in Sweet Hall. Had I been lucky enough to flip the same switch in her brain, we might have ended up like one of those sickeningly sweet couples who can’t get enough of each other, even after 20 years of marriage. Unfortunately for me, my emotions were not reciprocated.
To this day, I still think of her almost daily.
So what to do? Although I think thoughts of Sarah will intrude occasionally until the day I die, I’ve learned several ways to a) reduce the pain, and b) avoid embarrassing myself as much as I did. These are written from the perspective of a man, but most of them should be equally applicable to women too.
- She owes you nothing. Contractual obligations aside, everyone in your life is there at their pleasure. If she wants to leave and be with someone else, it’s her right to do so, as it is yours. All you can do is to try to make your life so compelling that she chooses to share it with you.
- Be cool. Don’t take it personally. Look at it from her perspective. How many of the women you meet do you want to date seriously, if at all? Probably only a small fraction. You just didn’t make the cut for her. Also, it might not be all about you. She may have emotional problems that make her run from any close relationships. There may be objective barriers to the relationship. For example, she may live in a distant city and not want to put up with the rigors of a long-distance relationship.
- Be excellent. Remember: you are a prize as well. Just as she’s qualifying you, you should be qualifying _her_. Is she up to your standards? Enumerate her faults. Does she smoke? Is she a hypochondriac? Knock her off her pedestal, and put yourself there instead. Ask yourself, “What makes me so cool?” Enumerate your virtues and your accomplishments every day before falling asleep. Immerse yourself in work, exercise, and social activities so that you’ll be more attractive to the next woman you desire. Money may not be able to buy love, but it can buy plane tickets, nice clothes, a comfortable pad, and good drugs. Moreover, the more money you have, the more secure you’ll feel (up to a point), and the more attractive you’ll be to women. Exercise has been shown to have the same magnitude of effect as anti-depressant drugs. And women are just as attracted to handsome men as men are to beautiful women. The flatter your stomach, and the bigger your muscles, the more you’ll be able to attract and keep a woman’s attention. Finally, spend time with your friends and family. Not only will that help reduce feelings of loneliness, but it will help you keep your social skills well-honed, so that when you do meet someone else, you don’t behave like a bumbling idiot.
- Be gone.* Always be prepared to leave. In their book, High Probability Selling, Jacques Werth and Nicholas Ruben wrote “[S]uppose I give you a deck of cards, face down, and tell you I’ll give you five dollars for every ace you find in the next two minutes. And suppose the first card you turn up is a six. How much time would you spend trying to convince the six that it’s an ace?” You should adopt the same strategy with women. Don’t waste time trying warm up a woman with tepid feelings for you. Instead, spend your time looking for the woman who is enthusiastic about you from the start.
- Reframe. What good will come of this? For example, maybe she had a difficult childhood. Now you’re free to find someone who doesn’t have so many crazy relatives. Does she live far away? Now you’re free to find someone closer.
- Be gracious. You may feel hurt and angry if your advances are rebuffed. Such feelings are normal. But don’t act on such feelings. Don’t communicate with her when you’re feeling angry. If she’s treated you poorly, forgive her. Anger, bitterness, and cynicism are turn-offs which will make it more difficult for you to win the heart of your next girlfriend. Don’t defriend her on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media. Unless she’s behaved unethically, it’s probably worthwhile to maintain her friendship. At a minimum, in the future, she can introduce you to her friends, and endorse you as someone worth knowing. However, sometimes the emotions can be so strong, obsessive or distracting that you need to more severely limit contact. In that case, don’t call her, don’t go to the places where she will hang out, and don’t invite her to group activities with you. If you must defriend her on Facebook or other social media, be discreet. Your goal is to get over her, not draw her attention to yourself. If they’re a source of obsessive behavior, you may wish to delete her pictures and emails. Maybe when you have another girlfriend, you can be friends again, but right now, you may want to remove any reminder of her.
- Behave proportionately, if you choose to maintain contact with her. Keep your correspondence brief, and infrequent. How would you feel if an unattractive woman kept sending you frequent, lengthy emails? You’d probably feel a little sad, a little awkward, and maybe a little scared. You’d probably ignore the emails, and hope she gives up. The object of your affection will feel the same way. Such emails won’t change her mind, and as they sit unanswered, you’re going to feel like a shmuck.
- Don’t play white knight. You might believe that if only you proved yourself enough to her, she will fall in love with you. You might be tempted to be a sympathetic ear, or help her when she’s down. “If only she sees what a caring, helpful guy I am, she’ll want me!” Superficially, it makes sense. After all, women do want caring, helpful men in their lives. But consider the meta-message you’re sending. The message you may be trying to send may be “I’m helpful, I’m kind! I would make a good partner for you.” However, the meta-message she’ll receive is likely to be “If you’re such a prize, why are you spending time and money on me? Why aren’t you spending it on someone who actually wants you? Since you’re not, it must mean that no one else wants you. Ergo, why would I want you?” Or she might think “He doesn’t think that he has to offer is enough to warrant my attention. Therefore, to make up for it, he thinks he has to ply me with gifts. Ugh, I can do better.” Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should be cold and uncaring. But it only takes a small action to show you care. If she’s having a bad day, send her a brief note with a joke or funny picture. But don’t make any grand gestures or significant investments in her. As a good rule of thumb, ask yourself: would I make the same effort for a male acquaintance? If you wouldn’t, it’s definitely too much.
- Believe actions, not words. Rejecting someone is emotionally painful for most people. Therefore, she may not be blunt about her feelings. She may send mixed messages. She might tell you that you’ve been “a huge influence on her life”, that you’re a “great guy”, or “she really wants to get to know you better.” As a result, you may believe you have more of a “shot” than you really do. What matters are her actions. Does she return your calls and emails? Does she ask you about your life as much as you ask about hers? Does she make time in her life for you? Good relationships are balanced, with each partner bringing something
to the table. If she’s not contributing to the relationship as much as
you are, over time, it’s time to let go.
Finally, build a life of abundance. The best way to get over a lost paramour is to find a new one, and the best way to find a new love is to throw yourself into life. You should have so much going on in your life that how any particular woman responds to you should be of small consequence. Cultivate a deep, and wide network of friends. Host parties. Find a passion, and throw yourself into it. Learn how to salsa. Ask your friends to hook you up with dates. Your attitude should be “My life is awesome! Wanna play?”
*Credit to “The Tao of Steve”.
2 Comments
November 13th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
As the commenters over at LJ mentioned, been there, done that.
Eventually figured out that if she’s one in a million (and she isn’t), there are 7.35 of her in the Bay Area, and 6,000 in the world!
Last ran into her about ten years ago, and something about that face still went straight to me, even though even then I’d long made peace with the reality that we were very different people on very different paths.
November 14th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Just as baby ducks imprint on mama ducks, I think we can imprint romantically on certain people, at certain times in our lives. It probably never fully goes away.
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