in this series: #1 | #2 | #3 | #3.5
I saw this question on Paiseh Questions recently:
The answer distribution was interesting. It suggests that women do not give themselves completely to men until the latter have “proven their worth”, so to speak.
It made me wonder about my own answer. This post is my process of working it out.
Everyone deserves love — or so a humanistic therapist would say — although not everyone eventually deserves your love.
Not because reciprocity is expected, but because we have a finite capacity and must optimise where it goes. We must make calculated decisions about who we want to love and who we want to love more.
I wanted to believe I could love everyone the same, but I’m only human.
I was obsessed with you. I could beg you to pay attention to me and love me. But what for? I am chasing a mirage. You were never there; only my projected ideal of you was. Alone, I run, and alone, I am exhausted.
Or I could spend all that time that would have otherwise been spent pining on reconnecting with myself and the world. Even redirecting my focus to someone else would be a better idea — someone whose eyes will glow with affection when I am reflected in them and who has a fanatical, absolutist certainty about me. Repeat ad infinitum; such is the search for love.
If I think you’re worth it, of course, I would love you. But I cannot give endlessly without return.
Unrequited love is worthless — yes, not merely useless, worthless. Sure, feel your feelings and all — I understand — but all it ultimately is is a limbo that torments the indecisive. You must move forward. Either cross the suspension bridge to heaven and risk falling or leap straight into hell from where you stand. It will be terrifying for a while, but you will always land, which is a certainty you will never receive from the object of your affection.
The unknown is a critical variable in this. The law of probability is immutable — there is something better out there. Stay or leave for more.
With unrequited love, always leave. You owe it to yourself.
All that being said, would that have stopped me from loving you in the first place?
I bought you a gift before I realised that we had already met for the last time, a decision you made unilaterally for both of us and which I enforced. That’s okay; I’ll use it from now on. I will eventually forget it was ever for you: time is cruel to the ones who are loved but kind to the spurned.
So, my perhaps unexpected answer to the question (given the preamble) is: I will give you everything I have because I am, I was, ready to love you. I don’t believe in withholding love, though I do believe in withdrawing it upon reflection. If it’s not what you’re looking for, I will give it to someone else. I might break, but I will live, recover, and thrive in time.
I hope you do too.
baby g’s diary 