Free Unrequited by Lisa A. Phillips

time-consuming,” and he couldn’t handle it.
    Lorne’s story is unsettling, not just because of how cowardly he was but also because there seems to be no way he could avoid being cowardly. The woman he was involved with deserved the love of a supportive man, but Lorne didn’t have it in him to be that man. Faked love would not have done either of them any good. Being honest, the more ethical path, still would have caused her pain. And it’s difficult to say which would be harder on her already deep psychological wounds: Lorne the irresponsible no-show, or Lorne the confessor, admitting his unwillingness to help carry her emotional baggage.
    FIVE DAYS AFTER Sonya’s long weekend with Ryan, he finally called. “I feel terrible,” he said. “But this is over.” The answer to “Why didn’t you call me?” was belated but clear: He didn’t want to continue what they’d started.
    Sonya went through the rituals of getting over her disappointment. She immersed herself in chick flicks and tried to focus on starting her senior year. But she couldn’t quite let go of all the significance she’d bestowed on Ryan. The day Sonya found out that a close high school friend had died after a long struggle with leukemia, she ran into Ryan. She embraced him. “I thought it was very significant that he was there,” she said. “He’d shown up in that moment when I needed someone to be there.” They met for dinner that evening. He made a confession quite similar to the one Janey’sex had made, admitting to his own preoccupation with The One Who Slipped Away: Just before his accident, he’d started to have strong feelings for a girl from his hometown. But after he was injured, she didn’t call, and he hadn’t heard from her since. He was getting over her, and that was why he couldn’t have a relationship with Sonya.
    For a while, she felt better. His rejection was no longer so mysterious. But their re-encounter launched another round of spending time together and flirting. They’d text each other often, competing in what she called contests of wit. She kept feeling that they were “building up to something,” but that something never happened.
    LAYING BARE THE dynamics of the interpersonal train wreck of unrequited love doesn’t absolve anyone of responsibility. Ryan indulged his ambivalence in a way that seems unjust. We don’t have to feel pity for the rejecter’s moral quandary and difficulty in making decisions, particularly if he isn’t treating us with dignity along the way. We just have to understand that the rejecter’s challenges are significant and can cause confusion and pain for both sides of the unrequited love equation. The rejecter doesn’t have to be a villain, or a broken soul who needs fixing, for the unwanted woman to face her real challenge: coping with the fact that she’s not getting what she wants.
    Yet the unwanted woman deserves some credit for her purposefulness. She is taking a stand amid—and against—the capriciousness of today’s mating landscape. She is looking for a sense of power in a confusing situation. In the simplest terms, she has a clear goal, and she’s doing what people working toward important goals do. They ponder and strategize. They face obstacles and try to remain patient. They take encouragement from signs of progress. They problem-solve. These qualities of perseverance arevalued in most other areas of life. If we believe a goal is possible to achieve and we want it badly enough,we’ll put in the effort over time to make it happen.
    This dynamic helps explain the “motivational paradox” of unrequited love. Psychology researchers Arthur Aron and Elaine Aron developed the influential self-expansion model of love, which holds that being in an intimate relationship benefits us because it expands our resources, perspectives, and sense of effectiveness. We incorporate our partner’s identity into our own and thus “expand” our selves. In unrequited love, we