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Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love
Throughout history, unrequited love has inspired ballads, arias, poetry, drama, and literature. Almost always, however, the tale of the "star-crossed lovers" has been told from the point of view of the heartbroken pursuer. This illuminating new work explores unrequited love from both sides--that of the aspiring and eventually brokenhearted lover, and more unusually, that of the beloved, unwilling rejector. Based on systematically collected first-person accounts, BREAKING HEARTS shows how radically different and often contradictory the two experiences actually are.
Blending scientific research with vivid narrative, the book utilizes current psychological theories about relationships, interdependence, attachment, and communication to provide careful analysis of the sometimes amusing and often heartrending stories people tell about their love lives. The central focus is the subjective What it feels like to love someone who does not love you in return, and what is it like to be pursued by someone whose attentions you wish to discourage. Demolishing pat theories about human fulfillment coming from loving or being loved, this valuable counterweight to traditional studies explores the other, darker side of love to show that it is the mutuality of affection that is crucial to happiness.
A particularly valuable feature of BREAKING HEARTS is its unprecedented treatment of the rejector's experience. Known only from the unreliable perspective of the would-be lover, the elusive "heartbreaker" has remained an enigma. Here, perhaps for the first time, rejectors tell what it is like to be loved in vain. They describe their inner turmoil, pervasive uncertainty about how to act, and distressed reluctance to inflict harm. They grapple with the paradox of believing themselves to be morally innocent yet feeling profoundly guilty, and describe powerful feelings of exasperation and helplessness when the admirer refuses to take no for an answer. Contrary to stereotypes, the rejectors describe their experiences more negatively than the heartbroken lovers. For the would-be lover, the encounter was a high-stakes gamble, with possible outcomes ranging from tortured pain and humiliation to ecstatic bliss and fulfillment. To the rejector, it was a no-win proposition that offered only vexation and trouble.
Throughout, chapters deal with the separate roller-coaster ordeals of two people--the ups and downs of self-esteem, struggles over guilt and justification, and the systematically discrepant versions of what actually occurred. Lessons people learn from being either willing or unwilling participants in unrequited love are discussed, as are the ways in which they change following such episodes.
BREAKING HEARTS presents careful research in an engaging style that will be accessible to all. Social scientists interested in marriage, family issues, emotion, self esteem, guilt, and human coping will find the book illuminating. It will obviously be of interest to anyone who has experienced unrequited love, and is fascinating reading for those seeking new insights into the tragicomic mystery of romance.
Blending scientific research with vivid narrative, the book utilizes current psychological theories about relationships, interdependence, attachment, and communication to provide careful analysis of the sometimes amusing and often heartrending stories people tell about their love lives. The central focus is the subjective What it feels like to love someone who does not love you in return, and what is it like to be pursued by someone whose attentions you wish to discourage. Demolishing pat theories about human fulfillment coming from loving or being loved, this valuable counterweight to traditional studies explores the other, darker side of love to show that it is the mutuality of affection that is crucial to happiness.
A particularly valuable feature of BREAKING HEARTS is its unprecedented treatment of the rejector's experience. Known only from the unreliable perspective of the would-be lover, the elusive "heartbreaker" has remained an enigma. Here, perhaps for the first time, rejectors tell what it is like to be loved in vain. They describe their inner turmoil, pervasive uncertainty about how to act, and distressed reluctance to inflict harm. They grapple with the paradox of believing themselves to be morally innocent yet feeling profoundly guilty, and describe powerful feelings of exasperation and helplessness when the admirer refuses to take no for an answer. Contrary to stereotypes, the rejectors describe their experiences more negatively than the heartbroken lovers. For the would-be lover, the encounter was a high-stakes gamble, with possible outcomes ranging from tortured pain and humiliation to ecstatic bliss and fulfillment. To the rejector, it was a no-win proposition that offered only vexation and trouble.
Throughout, chapters deal with the separate roller-coaster ordeals of two people--the ups and downs of self-esteem, struggles over guilt and justification, and the systematically discrepant versions of what actually occurred. Lessons people learn from being either willing or unwilling participants in unrequited love are discussed, as are the ways in which they change following such episodes.
BREAKING HEARTS presents careful research in an engaging style that will be accessible to all. Social scientists interested in marriage, family issues, emotion, self esteem, guilt, and human coping will find the book illuminating. It will obviously be of interest to anyone who has experienced unrequited love, and is fascinating reading for those seeking new insights into the tragicomic mystery of romance.
- GenresPsychologyLoveNonfiction
241 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Roy F. Baumeister
78 books432 followersDr. Roy F. Baumeister is Social Psychology Area Director and Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. He is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, and aggression. And enduring theme of his work is "why people do stupid things." He has authored over 300 publications and has written or co-written over 20 books.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 15, 2018
I don’t understand why I keep reading this author when it is clear that his writing style makes me cringe. Anyways, he has some good things to say I guess and I value those little observations over the vast biased pruned scientific claims he stands for. So here goes the review: love is the most powerful and happiest state one can achieve. To achieve this state a pair must both be invested equally conclusive with the matching equity theory. That is not in any way news to any of us but here comes the best that this book had to say about those people who tried to get to the highest happiest state but failed to do so. First and foremost unlike what our intuitions tell us there is no winner in unrequited love. One would assume that the rejector would be somewhat happier and would get a boost of esteem at the very least unlike the aspiring lover which would have had the opposite experiences, that is a loss of esteem and an unhappier state after the rejection, but research shows that when long term union is not achieved both sides suffer. Unlike our intuition tells us, the rejector has the worst aversion to the episode. The pursuer on the other hand does suffer from loss of self esteem and from being rejected but is able to look back with much less regret than the rejector. The rejectors, aside from those with pathologic disorders, feel a lot of guilt and wished they had never met the aspiring lover in the first place. The aspiring lover has two scripts: the hopeful romantic or the broken-hearted victim, the rejectors lack scripts and thus are overall more confused about what to do compared to the aspiring lovers. This whole situation contributes to the poor communication between them: the aspiring lover doesn’t want to hear about rejection and the rejector is reluctant to articulate the rejection in a firm and clear matter which in turn makes the aspiring lovers try harder while the rejectors “suffer” the consequences of unwanted advances. Thus nobody ever sees the rejector as a victim of the aspiring lover but in his mind he is. ***I say in his mind because if one is indeed so miserable at the unwanted advances from an aspiring lover one must clearly tell so for a couple of reasons: first nobody is a mind reader so if you don’t like someone tell them, secondly lying is cowardice thus you are leading on a person without telling them the truth, hence you’re taking advantage of them and it is unfair to them or you, so it is your fault for creating so much suffering. Third, I can only see the rejector as a victim when in fact he or she has clearly expressed disinterest in the aspiring lover and ceased completely to see the aspiring lover. Anything less than that is taking advantage of the aspiring lover.*** one interesting idea came out of this book is that a man and a woman can hardly be friends. One of them is hoping that by staying friends the other will change their minds and thus become lovers. So a heterosexual friendship is nothing more than a dance between the rejector and the aspiring lover each feeding each other. There are more nuances the author addressed in the book which I felt were either speculations or needed more data or more scientific arguments to be backed up but overall they seem really plausible, some claims related to attachement theory for example. It would have been interesting to see a comparison between healthy vs. pathological groups.
***denotes the beginning and the end of my opinions.
***denotes the beginning and the end of my opinions.
October 18, 2017
A good reminder that loving someone unattainable can be as painful and uneasy for them as for ones self. A good realignment.
October 14, 2020
A very interesting discussion of unrequited love. While books, poems, songs and movies usually focus on the plight of the likes of young Werther, this study focuses on the difficult and often painful role the object of this one-sided passion experiences, and is forced to endure without any social/cultural script to lean on.
November 18, 2010
Fantastic; original; accessible to the layperson yet contains methodology and statistical data to satisfy those in the field.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews