Unrequited Love Blog

I began thinking more clearly about writing a blog, getting some of this stuff out there for abreaction and feedback. Still thinking about Jessica, still very sexual, I make new sexual fantasies all the time.   Thinking about her around 80% of the time.

Late October: Before my brother’s wedding (his second marriage), even a couple days before, I feel Jessica is clearly a fantasy. My feelings are no more real than those of a teenager in love with Brad or Angelina, or at least no more than those of a child or teenager in love with an unavailable, popular peer. But in my sister-in-law-to-be’s hotel suite, watching her get ready, wearing her white wedding dress and placing her veil on, I felt a sharp pain in my gut, and found myself wondering what Jessica looked like in her dress, felt again her unavailability, and my desire, my loss…

At my brother’s wedding, I felt clearly it was so wrong to even think about her as available to me. They were married before God, I’m sure they love each other. I felt ashamed to be even having those thoughts and feelings about a woman who was so clearly “taken,” legally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Still, I’m still caught thinking about her so much – remembering her through memories, imagining who she might be through fantasy…

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In late September, before deciding to start this website and blog, I was lying in bed unable to sleep. Thinking about Jessica again. Where could I go with these feelings? It suddenly washed over me, the emotionally-based knowledge that I had really wanted her, and she didn’t want me, she just didn’t want me. It was so painful. I cried silently, next to my Spouse.

As I cried, I felt another wave of emotionally-based knowledge, that I was crying about my mother. It was my mother I had really wanted, who didn’t want me, who seemed so rejecting and inaccessible at the same time. I got up, this was about 4:30 in the morning, and started writing, beginning with the prose-poetry eventually posted on the “Musings” page of the website. Felt pleased with myself for being able to put some of the feelings down in words, even though I felt incredibly vulnerable and not a little bit stupid.

Not that this realization that my mother was rejecting is anything new. I had been aware of this for many years. But it was another moment of deep emotional awareness, how rejected I had felt, how rejected I continue to feel – unchosen, “unwanted.”

Thinking about her 99% of the time.

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I don’t feel in love anymore.  My thoughts and fantasies have definitely shifted.  I feel really sad, near tears much of the time.  I’m sad because I wanted to be with Jessica, to get to know her better, and she didn’t want me, she just wasn’t interested and I swear I feel heart-broken.

My fantasies have shifted to include more anger.  Before not-being-in-love-anymore, I would feel angry but always at the situation never at her.  I frequently felt very frustrated and would have fantasies of taking a baseball bat and smashing things in my office.  This fantasy arose spontaneously at times, and also when I would think of her being with that guy, being married.

Now my fantasies include some anger at her.  I’ll be driving and I’ll randomly say “bitch!” out loud.  I feel angry at being rejected but also know I have no reason or right to be.  It’s this weird mix of feeling angry and intellectually or cognitively laughing at myself for it.

I know that by all reasonable measures I’m being silly, fantastical, “projecting” my needs onto her, but that’s not how it feels.  And frankly I’m not sure that’s how it is — meaning I don’t want to be measured by all reasonable standards.  I understand and believe that she doesn’t owe me anything, that’s not what I mean.  But I’m not so sure this experience isn’t real.  So much of others’ reaction to unrequited love is to see it as a crush, a fantasy, a projection.  To me at this moment my feelings of love, grief, loss, anger seem very real or appropriate, that they are inspired by Jessica and my feelings for her, not by a wish-fulfillment fantasy or a sense of personal inadequacy or whatever the hell…

To those who are reading or subscribing to this blog, I really wish you would write back.  I feel lonely, I don’t want to be talking to myself, I want some reactions.  FYI, to clarify — This blog is meant to be about my personal experience, while the website unrequited-love.com is meant to be more of a discussion about unrequited love in general (not necessarily my personal experience).

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I feel empty and depleted again.  I’ve felt this way before. This whole thing of falling in love and the feelings I am going through seems cyclical.  It’s winding down in intensity, or morphing into something new, I’m not sure what that might be.

It’s funny to me how my feelings of being in love lasted pretty much 18 months down to the exact month, which is the average length of time of having these strong, all-consuming feelings of being in love.  Again, I am experiencing something that is part of the larger human condition.  It seems hard-wired, to a certain extent, something that over rides consciousness, like instinct.  Even my feelings and fantasies are very typical or average in many ways, of how people describe being in love (I’ll post on some of these fantasies shortly).

The winding down of intensity coupled with Jessica’s lack of availability to me in my life leaves me feeling sad, depleted, empty.  Maybe if I had been able to start a relationship with her these feelings might be different, less sad, more productive, focused on a life together, I don’t know.  It’s not that I don’t have feelings for her, or am not thinking about her.  I’m sure if I did see I would get all stirred up again, I would recognize again what I like/love in her, I would “spark” again.  But since she’s not around, and I’m not around her, those really powerful feelings are just dying down, like a campfire in the woods turning to embers, after the stories have all been told…

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It’s funny how I feel differently now.  I still miss her, am still in pain and want to be close to her, but I just don’t feel in love with her anymore.  I don’t have that intrusive, feverish quality that I had up until about last month or so.  I’m really focused on my website and blog now, maybe that’s a way of keeping her alive without relying on intensity of feeling to do so.  I still think about her a lot, a whole lot, but I just can’t convince myself she might have been interested and unable to show/express it.  I just feel pathetic, but again not really in control of the process.  I’m thinking about her all the time and she’s never thinking about me and she’s happily married and she’s probably going to be pregnant soon and she is really gone and it’s so painful and I still miss her….

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