Musings: When you love someone, but they don’t love you

It happens all the time, but no one chooses it. It happens to rich people and poor people. It happens to good people and not-so-good people. It happens to young people and old people. One day you wake up and the awful truth hits you in the heart: you love a person, but they don’t love you. No matter who it is that doesn’t love you, when you love someone, and they don’t love you back, you are in one of the most potentially self-destructive situations. Here’s some simple, common-sense ways I’ve learned to survive when you love someone, but they don’t love you.

1. It will hurt a lot at first. No one likes pain but pain can save your life. For example, how does a person know they have an appendix that is infected and about to burst? They feel pain and know they need help. In reality, the pain they felt saved their life. When you begin to see the signs and decide to see the truth, it is a pain-filled, heartbreaking moment. You tell yourself the truth — “She does not have an ounce of love for me,” and the truth hurts. The truth also sets you free. The pain is not forever, but the healing is.  Jesus has the power to heal everyone who is feeling pain, (Matthew 4:24). More than that, He knows about, cares about and feels your grief. 

2. Loving you is not mandatory. After you see and accept that there is a definite lack of love for you in that person’s heart, you must accept another difficult truth — that person is not required to love you. Your love for him does not require him to love you in return. It’s true that some people should love us, our parents, our grandparents, our siblings, our close friends. Sadly, sometimes, they don’t. Even God, who is love, does not make us love Him. He allows us to choose if we want to love Him. You can live the life God has planned for you if you stop wasting time trying to get love from a person who doesn’t have any to give.  

3. Jesus understands. When it comes to matters of your heart, you will heal fully when you allow Jesus to help you heal. If anyone understands what it’s like to love people and get nothing in return, it’s Jesus. If anyone understands betrayal, it’s Jesus. Everyone abandoned Him in His time of need, but the truth is that He didn’t expect loyalty from them. Jesus knows people and how they are. “Jesus, for His part, did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people and understood the superficiality and fickleness of human nature,” (John 2:24). He knows us. He loves anyway.

Jesus is really real. You aren’t talking to the air when you pour out your heart to Him; you are conversing with the Son of God. When you love someone, and they don’t love you, Jesus understands how you feel. He can heal every wound that any person has caused. He wants to give you back your joy. He loves you. You are very important to Jesus. He can make your heart new again.

“He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”

Psalm 147:3

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