WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE? WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE THAT SEEMS TO LIVE ON AND ON LIKE A WOUND THAT NEVER HEALS? HOW IS IT THAT A MAN CAN GO ON LOVING ONE WOMAN YEAR AFTER YEAR BELIEVING, IN SPITE OF THE PAIN, THAT AND DAY SHE WILL FIND A PLACE FOR HIM IN HER HEART? AM I A FOOL TO BELIEVE? I THINK THAT I AM A FOOL, AND YET I CONTINUE TO BELIEVE. AM I CREATING THIS SITUATION? OR IS THIS SITUATION CREATING ME?
A real lover never gets stuck anywhere. His offering is for love, not for persons. He loves beauty, not the rose flower, not the lotus flower. He loves beauty wherever it is; he does not get confused, he does not think that the container is the content.
You got confused. You are not a real lover. You have not really loved. In fact, you are avoiding love in the name of that woman. Now this is a beautiful trick to escape from love.
What can you do? You loved a woman and she never responded to you, so what can you do? Now you can only go on playing with your wound. You are a masochist. I will not say that you are a fool, you are not. You are a masochist, a clever masochist, an intelligent masochist. You are arranging for your torture through the name of love, in the name of love You are playing the game of being a martyr. you are enjoying this crucifixion.
You loved a woman; there is no necessity for the woman to love you. Your love is not enough to make it sure. Love is a two-way street, it is not one-way. But down the ages, poets, novelists, people who go on playing with imagination, have been talking about love as if when you love the person, the other person has to love you! The only condition that you have to fulfil is that you should really love. Even then, there is no need for the other to love you. The other has freedom, the other is a living soul. If the other has to love you just because you love, then where is his freedom? Where is his soul or her soul? Then you don’t leave any freedom for the other. If the other does not want you, does not like you, if the other is not turned on by you, then you can go on loving and nothing is going to happen.
Just your love is not enough. In fact, the more you try, the more the other will go far away, because the other will become more and more afraid of you. You are dangerous! Even before love has happened you are not allowing freedom. What will you do when the love has happened? You will suffocate the woman or the man. You will surround the woman in such a way that it will become a prison. Even right now the woman has not responded, but you are waiting. And you are thinking and hoping that because you love, she has to love you. Why? There is no must in it, there is no inevitability in it. Just the reverse will be the case. The more you chase her, the more you will make her afraid of you and the more she will escape from you. You are dangerous. And the paradox is, the more she will be going away from you the more you will fantasise about her.
A real woman very soon loses all charm. So is the case with a real man, because with reality the fiction cannot be continued for long. All relationships settle down by and by — the honeymoon is only short. If you really get the woman, within seven days, fifteen days, three weeks, things will start settling; the fiction, the poetry, the fantasy will start disappearing. The real woman and the real man will come back to earth. You cannot go on moving in the clouds for long. The other’s reality will pull you back to the gravitation.
So when love is responded to, it is finished soon. When love remains unrequited, it can continue for your whole life, because there is no way for it to be finished. You can go on playing in your imagination — games, fantasies, dreams…
You can go on living in your dreams, and you will think that you are a great lover — how much you are sacrificing! But you are simply a masochist. This can be done only by a masochist who wants to torture himself. Now you have found a good excuse to torture yourself.
I cannot appreciate this. I have no appreciation for any pathology, whatsoever the excuse. This is pathological.
You offered yourself, the woman denied — it is finished! There are millions of women in the world. Why are you wasting your life? If you want to waste it that’s another thing, but then don’t befool yourself that it is because of love. Love is just an excuse, you really want to waste your life. You are afraid of love! You are depending on that woman. You don’t want to approach another woman. One woman does not mean anything. Neither does one man mean anything.
If you are hungry you will eat even if the food that you wanted to eat is not available. Or won’t you? If you are thirsty you will drink even if Coca-Cola is not available — plain Poona water will do! If you are thirsty you will drink, you will not say ‘I will die, but I will not drink because I only drink Coca-Cola. I love Coca-Cola!’ No, you will drink, you are thirsty. You are hungry, you will eat. If you are really hungry for love, then what docs it matter if one woman has refused you? There is no need to feel lost, because there are millions of women.
But one woman has denied you, then there are a few things involved in it. First, your ego is hurt — as if you have some power over people. Just because you love, does somebody else have to love you? You can offer yourself, but the other has to decide. You took the initiative, but if the woman could not like you that does not mean that you are nobody, that simply means something was not fitting between you two. And it is good that the woman denied you. If out of politeness, or out of respect, or out of compassion, she had agreed to you, you would have been in far more trouble. Because compassion can never become love, and politeness is hypocrisy. If she had not liked you and decided to go with you for some other motive, you would have been in far more trouble and anguish, because there would have never been that harmony that happens between two people who are in love with each other. She would always have been the compassionate one, the sympathiser; she would have felt for your misery.
That’s what you are doing. That’s what people go on doing. When one woman has refused, or one man has refused, they go on crying, they go on making themselves miserable in the hope that misery will create compassion in the other. Misery CAN create compassion, and that is dangerous because compassion is never love. And you cannot be fulfilled by compassion, because the one who is showing compassion remains higher than you. You are a beggar. The woman can give to you, but there will be no passion in it. When compassion has come, passion disappears. There will be no thrill in the woman’s heart, she will never feel ecstatic. She will always feel obliging. She will remain insensitive because her own heart will not open for you. She will pretend, she will do whatsoever is needed, she will fulfil the duty, but duty is not love.
Love is ecstasy, duty is dull. She will not dance because of you. She may become a good householder, she may take care of your children, she may look after you, she will be a good caretaker but these things don’t fulfil.
It is good that the woman didn’t show any compassion to you. And you are asking for compassion, that’s why you cannot allow the wound to heal. Once the wound is healed, then nobody will show compassion for you. You cannot get down from your cross! You have to hang there, and you have to go on shouting ‘Look how much I am suffering! Come!’ You are trying to create a situation in the woman’s heart so that she starts feeling GUILTY, that it is SHE who is responsible for all your suffering. That’s why you cannot allow the wound to heal. This is not love. This is ego — one.
And second — this IS FEAR of love. You are afraid to knock at another door because you have been rejected once, so you are afraid you may be rejected again. You are hesitant, so you go on knocking on the same door, and your knocking on the same door will only create nausea in the woman. You will be a nuisance. She can’t love you, so you vv-ill become more and more of a nuisance.
Forget about her, and forgive her. And this is your life — don’t waste it. And this life is precious — don’t let it go down the drain. Love can still flower. If it has not happened with A, it can happen with B, it can happen with C. The real thing is the flowering of love. WITH WHOM it happens is irrelevant!
But people become too obsessed with small things. It should happen only with this woman who has black hair.’ What is wrong with blonde or brunette? ‘It should happen only with this woman who has such a long nose.’ These are obsessions! Foolish! You get too much involved in details, and you go on missing the real point. The real point is that LOVE should happen! And once it starts happening and your heart starts flowing, it is even possible THAT woman may become interested in you. Because people only become interested in people who are happy, who are flowing, who are blooming. If you start blooming, there is a possibility… I only say possibility, I am not saying certainty, otherwise you can even do that. If you start blooming, that woman may start thinking of you. She may start feeling that she missed an opportunity, she may start feeling that there is still time, she may start thinking ‘How to make it?’ she may start knocking on your door.
But that is possible only when you are happy. Now you are a wound! Nobody loves a wound. And remember, if somebody loves a wound, beware of that person — that person is neurotic. Escape, because if the person loves the wound, he will never allow the wound to heal. He will go on creating bigger wounds in you, because he loves wounds.
There are people who love wounds because when somebody is wounded, they are always upper, higher, greater, better.
you are struggling at the lowest point.
Try to get out of it. And don’t wait for any miracle. Miracles don’t happen.
OSHO
