“He doesn’t love me…” Our expert knows what you can really do when he doesn’t return your feelings.
How you can survive unrequited love
Sorry, but I don’t love you … What to do when he doesn’t love you back while you get heart palpitations every time you see him? A survival strategy for unhappy love.
“A few months ago, I fell in love again after a long time – with a man I’ve known and been friends with for five years. “Oh that’s a pipe dream, you’ve known him for so long and so well, it can’t be,” went through my head. I struggled for a long time with the thought that it just couldn’t be, because then I would have noticed it sooner, right?
No. No matter how well I tried to suppress it, the feelings were there. The butterflies in my stomach, the weak knees, the joy when I saw him. “Great, now what?”
Don’t think he’ll notice!
We women are very sensitive to emotions and changing situations. Unfortunately, I also projected this assumption onto him and was convinced that he would already notice. Forget it!
He doesn’t love me: when something like this happens to you, this rule applies.
If you want him to know how you feel about him, you have to tell him!
And that’s what I did. Right off the bat, he didn’t feel the same way about me.
As I said, we’ve known each other for almost five years and I assumed that he noticed them: my looks, my smile, the “random” touches and my strange questions about his love life, which I asked in much more detail than I had before.
But no, he didn’t and so I only had the choice between sitting it out and being honest. I then chose the second option – and was bitterly disappointed, because he has met someone with whom he can imagine more.
That there is (once again) someone in his life was nothing new for me. But that he was more serious than usual, was.
We were both overwhelmed with the situation.
He has no feelings for me and loves someone else.
Now that I confessed it to him, I was faced with a choice again: should I let myself fall into self-pity, dead sad, and sink into my heartbreak? Or should I work through the heartbreak by investing more in my self-love?
I chose the second option and if you read my blog regularly, you know how important self-love is in a relationship, during a breakup and for all interpersonal relationships. Since three months in Thailand were on my schedule anyway, I used exactly that to get away.
Yes, I realize that not everyone can just get away for three months, but there are countless ways to get away and even more to practice self-love.
As I write this, I am sitting in Chiang Mai and he is sitting in Munich. We have had no contact since I left two months ago. I think of him often, but the distance is doing me good right now. And that he is not really active on Facebook and Co. makes the whole thing a bit easier for me.
To answer my initial question “What to do if he doesn’t love me?”:
I know very well how you feel if you are in such a situation right now. But I would like to give you a few questions to ask yourself. Maybe they will help you to clear your emotions a little bit and to look at your situation from a bird’s eye view.
- How can I deal with the disappointment and anger at my own “stupidity” in confessing to him?
Feel like the ultimate jerk for being so honest and getting turned down? Don’t. You were brave and took control of your life. You got clarity on something that has taken up a big part in your life. And now you know where you stand. Yes sure, you didn’t wish for the outcome, but you can do something with it. You can work through your heartbreak and disappointment and give yourself a chance at a new relationship. That’s a good thing!
- do I want to be with someone who doesn’t want me as a wife by his side?
No. And I am sure this answer is in your mind. Yes, it’s not easy that he doesn’t feel the same way about you. But it would be even harder to be the wife by the side of a man you are not enough for and who doesn’t love you. Wouldn’t it?
- What do I do with all the love I feel?
Shift it. To yourself! Be good with yourself and use all the positive energy and beautiful emotions for yourself. Do something good for yourself! Learn something new, try something new, treat yourself to a massage, have a girls night out. Put yourself first and love yourself! I’m not saying this is easy. But the alternative is just feeling sorry for yourself.
- Do I love him more than myself?
Well, I hope not. Because if you answer yes to this question, then you are not ready for a relationship. You have to learn to love yourself the most before you can love someone else with all your heart. By the way, when I talk about self-love, it has nothing to do with arrogance, but with consciously loving yourself.
- Why does he have so little empathy? Why can’t he handle it?
Well, men are different from us women. Before it hails criticism: I can’t speak for all men, of course, any more than I can speak for all women. But if we think in black and white terms, it is the case that women by nature have developed more empathy and sensitivity to such situations than men. He doesn’t mean that in a bad way, he just doesn’t see it and can’t act the way you would like, expect or do it yourself. From there: Be lenient and accept that men and women simply think differently.