Living through the sorrow of unrequited love is not easy, especially if the ending of a relationship is unexpected or sudden. Even when there are warning signs, many can’t, or don’t want to, recognize them.
It is natural for the partner left behind to experience a grieving process to work through their feelings of loss and confusion. They reach out to friends and family members for comfort and support. In time, most are able to search for love again, hopefully armored with lessons they don’t want to repeat.
But for some others, that resolution feels out of reach. They feel immobilized, unable to accept that their dreams for a future are forever gone. No matter how hard they try, they cannot let go of what once was and is no longer.
Throughout more than four decades of practicing therapy, I have spent many hours helping such tortured souls understand what has kept them from being unable to let go of their sorrow.
As they unearth underlying issues, they often realize that such issues have been present in every relationship they’ve had, sabotaging prior loves in a way they did not realize before. Understanding in a new way, they can both heal from their past losses and prevent future ones from happening.
The 10 most common underlying issues that may drive the angst of obsessive and ongoing sorrow:
1. Unresolved Grief
Broken hearts that are never understood or healed can linger for a lifetime, especially those that were first experienced in childhood. Those hopes for healing are projected on to each new romantic relationship, such as a search for the perfect symbolic parent who will not hurt them in the same way. Then, when they are hurt again, the original trauma is reactivated.
2. Narrow Focus
It is discouraging for many to endlessly date people who do not live up to their romantic idealizations or basic needs. Over time, they begin to narrow their search, focusing on very specific qualities of the only one they feel can fulfill their desires and expectations. Unable to see beyond such qualities, they can drive partners away with their inability to stretch beyond what they feel they must have.
3. Searching for “The One”
Many people have told me that they are “hopeless romantics.” That means that they have lived their entire lives searching for their soulmate, the one who will automatically meet all their desires and needs. They project that expectation on to all new relationships and go all in, often not noticing that the other person may not feel the same. When that relationship ends, they move on with the same goal, not realizing that quality relationships are forged, not given entities.
4. Feeling Cheated
Perhaps because of too many rejections, those who cannot let go of another may be unable to deal with their anger, feeling victimized by what they believe were unkept promises. They want the person they couldn’t have to miss them, to grieve their loss, and to make up for what they’ve done. They play a retaliation sequence over and over in their mind, unable to find resolution.
5. Avoiding Other Disappointments
Sometimes obsession is easier to live with than looking at life without it. In the multiple, repetitive sequences in their minds, they can play all of the parts. In the world outside of their captured minds, they cannot rewind those sequences. What if there is no one better? What if they will never be chosen by someone they want? What if the person they are obsessing about isn’t who they really are? What if they don’t deserve the person they want?
6. MIAs: It’s Easier to Hope than to Accept Failure
Many people who suffer obsessive love continually ruminate over alternative sequences that might have happened had the person they were attached to come back. They are in a state of constant waiting, using the hope of reconnecting as a salve that keeps their wound from hurting so painfully. Children who suffer the loss of a beloved parent, whether by abandonment or death, often live in a state of immobility, fearful that, if they move on, they will miss the reunion they are aching for. That same pattern is projected on to their adult relationships.
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7. Trauma Bonds
Those raised by parents who alternately loved them and rejected them are likely to ignore any deficits in a relationship in order to hold on to moments of joy. When their relationships end, they continue only to focus on all of the positives and cannot understand why the relationship ended, unable to let go or understand why the other person could walk away.
8. Lost Future Dreams
Relationships both suffer and benefit from lessons learned from past relationships. When a person feels that they have found someone to create a future with, they commit to that upcoming time as an opening to a new set of possible experiences. Those who are prone to fantasizing about that more perfect dream are more deeply shattered when that future dissolves. They cannot let go of what they envisioned would have been their life.
9. There Will Never Be Another
Wonderful relationships are not easy to find nor to maintain. When someone meets a person who seems perfect in every way and different from any relationship they’ve had before, they feel they are “home.” They let down their guard and become vulnerable in a way they may not have before. When that relationship ends, they are unprepared for the grief that accompanies that level of loss and my feel hopeless and defeated.
10. Over-giving
There are people who perceive themselves as givers. Regardless of whether or not their devotion or commitment to a relationship is reciprocal, they continue to dote on their partner. When the relationship is ongoing, they feel comfortable in the imbalance, seemingly not deterred by it. Once that other person leaves, they then feel used and discarded, unable to stop thinking about the unfairness of being abandoned when they’ve given so much.
