How can I get over this terrible unrequited love?

I am suffering from the worst case of unrequited love. Please help me get over this.

The person who has stolen my heart is my colleague. It started when we bonded really well while working closely together for a month. I had never felt so mentally happy for a long while.

After some time, I had fallen deeply in love for my colleague and all the bad stuff of unrequited love. I felt jealousy when I saw someone else shares the same close friendship we had. I felt a sharp pain in my heart whenever the thought of my colleague ignoring or hating me starts to flash by. I had become very obsessive of my colleague's interests and dislikes so that I could change myself for my love. I even felt the same chest pain whenever I see my love smoking (smoking is something that I hate the most)! I had never felt this way, even when my dad or brother smokes. I even have surreal thoughts of picking up smoking so that I could spend more time with my colleague.

To make matters worse, I am 90% sure that my colleague doesn't feel the same way as I do. It is just a friendship to my colleague. Even though I am a very logical person, I could not help but feel that there is chance for my love to return the same feeling back to me. I am at a loss; what am I supposed to do right now?

Even reading the wonderful article you had written couldn't help ease the tension in my heart. Please help me get over it, Mark. It has been over two months and time is not healing my broken heart. I am looking forward to your reply.

This question was submitted by 'Jake'

Mark says...

Hi Jake and thanks for getting in touch.

I'm glad you found the unrequited love article of some use. And remember, it's certainly worth re-reading and putting its ideas into practice. There is also, of course, the 'Unrequited Love' download you can use and you don't say whether you've used that yet.

Love – or maybe we can call it 'emotional obsession' – can drive us to great lengths, as you've found. Those obsessive thoughts and feelings that try to drive you toward this person have even led you to have sensations such as chest pains when he/she smokes. You've even considered taking up something you hate – smoking – as a pretext to spend more time alongside your colleague.

I have a couple of questions. You say you are 90% sure they don't return your feelings, although they quite like you. But do you know for sure? Have you actually asked them out? Perhaps just as a way of confirming that they maybe don't want any more with you. Hope, even just a tiny little, can be tormenting. The more completely you can close that door, the better, perhaps. Or they may see you socially as a friend at first, then come to care for you…maybe. No guarantees at all.

The point is that, right now, it's all just stuff in your head. So, some sensible steps to actually at least discover whether there really is no hope and then (if that's the case) accept that like an adult may be important. Of course, you should never be in the position of harassing or stalking anyone. The best kinds of relationships are more or less equally reciprocal with attraction, interest, and love for one another 'symmetrical' and balanced from both sides.

Intimacy and a central romantic relationship may have been sold to everyone as the 'be all and end all', but it is only one need, albeit an important one for many people. Think about all the other primal human needs you have as a human being and start to try to meet those in balance.

Are you in love with the person or the feeling of being in love with this person? It's bittersweet, but there is still a sweet part to your feelings, which makes it all the more compulsive. As I suggest in the article, it's worth really thinking about the image of the person you are in love with, your imaginative projection of them, vs the real them, which you probably don't know too well.

Sometimes when people have been in love (or believe they have) and come out of that, it can be a shock to them to find the person they thought they were in love with is not the same as the actual person at all. I would say this is certainly a feature of your current experience.

You can get through this. And what it's given you is a strong sense of strong focus that, as you develop it, can be applied to parts of life that can take you forward, not have you wrestling with your own imagination. You need a real relationship, not one based on fantasy or placing someone on a pedestal.

All best wishes,

Mark