We’ve all been there... We meet someone who lights our world on fire, and for a brief moment, our weary heart’s pain and suffering melt away in the glow of hope that love will save us. But it doesn’t quite pan out, and we’re left utterly alone, grasping at the leftovers of our original inkling of infatuation: that instant where all potential outcomes for eternal happiness were possible.

The moment you recognize that your love is unrequited feels like a dagger to the heart, and looks like a scene out of a Natalie Imbruglia song: “I am cold and I am shamed lying naked on the floor.” Unrequited love sucks, so why do we engage? My theory is two fold: first, that we love loving, and two, that we are attached to our emotional pain.

Love: the ethereal feeling that poets and philosophers have attempted to explore, scientists and mathematicians have tried to dissect and calculate, and soldiers and kings have died for. At one point or another, we’ve all fallen victim in the pursuit of love: the purest and most virtuous of all emotions.

But let me save us all the verbose pontification on the nature of love, and skip to why we ultimately desire to love. We love because we are love; thus, we love loving because it allows us to experience our own state of being. French philosopher Roland Barthes says, "by a specifically amorous perversion, it is love the subject loves, not the object." He continues, "it is my desire I desire, and the loved being is no more than its tool." How beautiful that we can pick a person we fancy and, without any reciprocation, experience the delight of loving. We can use this otherwise apathetic and completely disengaged person as an outlet for our innate desire to express love.

Further, unrequited love gives us a chance to explore our ability to love unconditionally. Take Helena’s monologue to the object of her affection, Demetrius, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as a prime example:

And even for that do I love you the more.

I am your spaniel. And, Demetrius,

The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.

Use me but as your spaniel—spurn me, strike me,

Neglect me, lose me. Only give me leave,

Unworthy as I am, to follow you.

What worser place can I beg in your love—

And yet a place of high respect with me—

Than to be usèd as you use your dog?

Unrequited love makes us act like a loyal dog that obediently follows our master without question or protest; this 'Old Faithful' complex is the embodiment of unconditional love. There’s a certain power in knowing from experience that within you lies access to infinite love. As W. H. Auden says in his poem, The More Loving One, “If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.”

The other side of unrequited love is characterized by a debilitating insecurity that's drenched in neurosis and wrapped in a blanket of neediness. The basis of this mush-pot of yucky emotions is an unhealthy attachment to our beliefs about our partner, and our beliefs about ourselves. We desire to bestow our love upon someone we deem worthy. When we put the object of our affection upon a pedestal, we become attached to the beliefs we hold about them. We tend to deify our lover, (s)he becomes holier than thou, and everything (s)he does is the greatest thing that anyone has ever done.

Like addiction, attachment feeds the sick pleasure we derive from emotional pain. Perhaps we grew up feeling unworthy, shameful, and unlovable; thus, our emotional pain caused by unrequited love validates this paradigm. We are attached to the validation, albeit negative and destructive.

While we can logically and consciously invalidate our limiting paradigms, they still exist: lurking in the briny deep of our subconscious mind, ready to attack like sharks whenever we try to swim ashore the white-sand beaches on the isle of self-acceptance.

Whether we’re being validated through true love (“you are deeply worthy”) or unrequited love (“you are unworthy”) is irrelevant because the effect is the same: you are receiving a confirmation about a belief that you’ve long held about yourself. We are so deeply attached to our beliefs that when we receive validation (whether positive or negative,) a subtle, snarky arrogance emerges from within. We hear that little voice inside our head whisper, “I told you so.”  And that gives our ego the boost of pleasure it's been seeking.