Unrequited Love

Nicole L. Mead & Roy F. Baumeister

Unrequited love refers to instances when one person (the would-be lover) feels romantic, passionate feelings for an individual who does not return the same feelings (the rejector). Research indicates that unrequited love is quite common. Almost everyone in the United States has either loved someone who did not love them in return or been loved by someone they did not love in return by the time they reach college. For centuries, unrequited love has been a prevalent theme in the cultural arts (e.g., poetry, music, literature), as well as the popular media. If you turn on your radio, there is a good chance you will hear a melancholy singer lamenting over having his or her love refused by the object of his or her affection. Despite societies' fascination with the topic, psychologists devoted little attention to the topic until more recently. In the early 1990s Roy Baumeister and colleagues collected ...

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