If you’ve ever experienced the pang of unrequited love, you understand the profound bitterness of longing for someone who doesn’t reciprocate your feelings. Love often ignites a deep-seated desire for mutual affection, and when that desire is unmet, the pain can be excruciating. In those moments, it’s natural to wish you could extinguish those feelings, to unlove the person who doesn’t love you back, or even erase the experience of loving them altogether. Even if you haven’t personally navigated this emotional terrain, you can likely imagine the torment it entails.
It’s no surprise that people seek various strategies to cope with and overcome unreciprocated affections. In George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, the character Rex Gascoigne, rejected by Gwendolen Harleth, pleads with his father for permission to leave England for Canada in an attempt to escape his heartache. Many turn to distractions like social outings, hobbies, or even seek solace in short-lived romances. Well-meaning friends often offer a barrage of advice and remedies, from weekend getaways to matchmaking attempts. Yet, those who have truly loved without return know that while such advice might provide temporary respite or a chance to heal from disappointment, they don’t extinguish the flame of love itself.
But why is it so difficult to simply stop loving someone, even when it causes pain? Because the recognition that ceasing to love might be beneficial doesn’t automatically grant us the ability to do so. Pragmatic reasons to fall out of love simply miss the fundamental nature of love itself – its arational core. However, this situation isn’t entirely bleak. While unrequited love carries inherent bitterness, reframing our perspective can transform it into something bittersweet.
Love, in its essence, is often described as either rational or arational. Rational love implies love justified by reasons. For instance, one might imagine Anna Karenina in Tolstoy’s novel loving Count Vronsky because of his charm, persistence, and attentiveness. Arational love, conversely, is love that transcends such logical justifications. It’s not based on a checklist of admirable qualities but arises from a deeper, less definable place. There are compelling arguments for why romantic love leans towards this arational form, one being the philosophical “problem of particularity.” This puzzle questions: if love were solely rational, based on traits like charm and attentiveness, why would we fixate on one particular charming person over countless others who possess similar qualities? Why Vronsky, and not another equally charming individual?
Some philosophers, like Niko Kolodny, suggest that the shared history within a relationship provides the rational basis for romantic love and resolves the problem of particularity. After all, while numerous charming individuals exist, only Count Vronsky shared that initial encounter with Anna at the Moscow train station. However, the phenomenon of unrequited love casts doubt on this theory. Doesn’t unrequited love frequently blossom at first sight or develop for someone we barely know? If love can ignite without a pre-existing relationship, then the relationship itself cannot be its foundational reason.
This brings us back to the idea that love is fundamentally arational. Consequently, while it might be “better” in a practical sense for a heartbroken individual to move on, this logical imperative won’t necessarily compel or enable us to do so. Love isn’t governed by reason; it’s not something that can be undone through sheer willpower or logical persuasion.
Some might counter, arguing that if love causes harm, surely that provides a valid reason to cease loving. If unrequited love inflicts pain, isn’t that reason enough to stop? Yet, again, love isn’t easily swayed by reason, even when that reason points to self-preservation. To echo Shakespeare, once in love, our devotion can persist “even to the edge of doom.” Consider Sydney Carton in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and his love for Lucie Manette. Despite her love for another, Carton sacrificed his own life for her sake, taking the place of her beloved at the guillotine. This exemplifies how romantic love can be viewed not only as arational but also as unconditional.
If you are grappling with unrequited love and find yourself persuaded by the notion that your love is arational and unconditional – thus, resistant to rational dismantling – you might feel a renewed sense of distress. But take heart, because there are compelling reasons to embrace your situation. (It’s important to clarify that this doesn’t apply to abusive relationships where love is manipulated.) Unrequited love can be deeply painful, but it can also be, paradoxically, a profound and enriching experience. It’s a unique form of emotional intensity, and by shifting your perspective, you can lessen its sting. The unrequited lover doesn’t need to impatiently wish for their love to vanish. Instead, they can choose to embrace it, for however long it endures. Embracing your love, even in its unrequited form, can transform its nature and diminish its hurtful impact.
What does embracing love truly mean? While love itself is arational, our attitude towards it can be consciously chosen and shaped by reason. Rejecting our love can create internal conflict – we love, yet we disapprove of our loving, leading to alienation and intensified bitterness. However, by adopting an attitude of affirmation, we can achieve inner harmony. This “embracing” of unrequited love means consciously telling yourself, “I am in love, and that’s okay.”
You might worry that embracing unrequited love for pragmatic reasons—because it’s “better” for you—is somehow inauthentic. You might question whether you can genuinely affirm your love if you don’t truly believe it’s “okay” to be in love in this situation. Fortunately, there’s a powerful, non-prudential reason to embrace your unrequited love: its sublime quality.
The very fact that love is arational, and that we are capable of it, is something to celebrate. Despite our inherent human limitations, we possess the capacity for arational, unconditional love—a capacity that brings us as close as we may ever get to experiencing the infinite or eternal. This resonates with Immanuel Kant’s concept of the mathematical sublime. To paraphrase Kant, our capacity to feel something so immense, so overwhelmingly powerful, and so beyond our rational control “indicates a faculty … which surpasses every standard of sense.”
To love is to demonstrate a capacity that transcends both sensory experience and reason itself. The depth of feeling we are capable of is a quintessential expression of our humanity, and our relative powerlessness in the face of love is perhaps a defining aspect of what makes us human. As W. H. Auden eloquently wrote, “If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me.” While the sublime nature of love might be metaphorically “mathematical,” love doesn’t need to be strictly categorized as mathematical or dynamic to be considered sublime. For Kant, the sublime represents the closest we can get to peering beyond the phenomenal world, the world of understandable phenomena.
Love, therefore, is perhaps best understood as sublime because it embodies, or at least hints at, something that defies complete comprehension. We instinctively seek reasons for love, desiring it to be rational, to make sense. Yet, love often evades our attempts to rationalize it. Love isn’t a choice, yet it’s also not merely a passive event that happens to us. There’s an inherent incomprehensibility in this paradox, reflecting a profound mystery at the heart of agency, even our own self-agency. Our experiences of love and our attempts to analyze it may be the closest we come to encountering a dimension of selfhood that lies beyond the constraints of practical reason. Love exists at the very outer limits of our capacity for rational understanding. It is sublime because it offers a glimpse into the supersensible realm.
In conclusion, love—including unrequited love—is exceptional. It can endure through anger, pain, and grief, persisting against all odds, flourishing in unexpected places and times. While it may cause you pain that your love is not returned, find solace in this: in loving, you are gazing over Kant’s edge. This precipice, though daunting, is not something to be avoided. Instead, regard it with awe and celebrate your proximity to it. This perspective may not be a simple cure-all, but it offers something deeper. Romantic or not, reciprocated or not, love is sublime and worthy of embrace because it reveals a unique and noble capacity within you, the lover.
