Time and Unrequited Love

I think unrequited love stories are some of the worst representatives of the phenomenon of romanticization. You can romanticize your love for five, ten, fifteen years - but eventually the rose tint on your glasses will weather away and all you'll be left with is a brutal, clear hindsight.

Unrequited love stories in media are so well-loved (the irony) because there is an end to them - and more often than not, the closure is a happy one. We love these stories because we love the excitement of the chase, the romanticized sadness and longing, the hope that the loved one will, one day, turn around and say "I love you, too." There is a whole world of possibility - but it is very neatly contained in start and end brackets. You know that the happy ending is on its way, but the time frame is just long enough to give you the suspense and excitement of a real, honest-to-God unrequited love story. But since time in media only moves as fast as you do, a whole lifetime of love, happiness, and sadness can be contained in a full-length novel, or a few seasons of a show, or a two-hour movie. You get all of the beauty of sad love, without the crushing reality of time warping your heart - unlike real life.

In the real world, time moves at time's pace. There is no shortcut, no fast-forward button where you rush to the end and into your loved one's arms as they finally, finally say yes. You can only live through it, day by plodding day, growing up and growing old, living with the wound on the surface or pushing it deeper and deeper down and moving on with your life. You might even meet someone else, love them, get married to them, build a whole new life with them - but your unloved love remains with you, flowing through your veins every day until the ultimate closure of them all. 

That's real life, and it hurts. The one you yearn for so desperately might never love you back, or they might come back to you after fifty years, near the end of your life, or - worst of all - they might give themselves to you only for your illusions to shatter and disillusionment to set in, because it isn't as good as you dreamed it to be. Whatever it is, you'll have to wait to find out - wait a real, proper amount of time, not a few seasons, or a few hours, or a few hundred pages.


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