One sided

Love, if it is true, is always one sided.

I do not mean to say here that two people cannot be in mutual love of each other. That, though in actuality rare, is possible.

What I want to convey is, that if one truly loves the other person, it is going to be one sided. The feeling one has for the other is not going to be dependent on how the other feels. For the lack of a better word, one may say that all love, in essence, is platonic.

If it weren’t so, and if in fact we were dependent on reciprocity to truly love someone, it would become a mere transaction. just a “give and take“. No?

Sounds complex and unreal!  Understand this by this example.

Pick up any person that you know you truly love. Husband/ Wife/ Parent/ Sibling/ Child……. Now, if that person were to not love you back, for whatever reasons; keeping aside the hurt/ anger etc of not being loved back, would you really stop loving that person? If your sibling told you he/she was indifferent towards you, you may be upset, but would that knowledge that there is no reciprocity, end your love for that person.

Think hard…. And here’s the clincher… if your answer to my above question is that lack of desired emotion from the other end would actually hold a place in deciding your emotion for that person; it’s a sad state of affairs for you and that particular relation. Not from the side of that person, but from your side.

Now I’ll move on to the next level question. That is, if you agree with what I said above.

Now that we know that love for the other person is not dependent on them, why is it so important that the other person reciprocate. Yes, it would be great if he/she did. But what we end up doing is making ourselves miserable if that is not the case. Why?

That person did not ask you to love them. If you, by your own free will, decided that you loved them, do they not get the free will to decide not to have that emotion for you? It is funny how the persons we claim to love become culprits in our eyes if they decide to practice their free will. They have every right not to love you, to love someone else, or feel whichever way they deem fit.

However, my focus is not on that other person, it is on you (Person 1). We get sad, depressed, low etc when we find out that our emotions are only from our end. Now that we know that it isn’t actually of consequence for our emotion that how the other person feels, be happy and grateful that you got a chance to live in the emotion.

An emotion as positive as love, and we blemish it by sighting it as reason for our sadness……Ironical!!!