What did you feel about someone loving you more than you loved them?

I felt like I should have acted differently or said something else. And, it especially bites me when that person (or animal, e.g. dogs) are not going to be around for long time.

I remember of a dog, my uncle’s dog. He loved me so much. Whenever I visited, he used to come to me straight way. And in his final days, he was paralyzed. He couldn’t move. Uncle took care of him for a year or so. When I went back, I didn’t know of his paralysis, I wondered why he is not getting up. But, I looked right in his eyes and understood his situation. The next day, he died, as if he waited to meet me before death. I still feel I should have spent some more time with him on that day.

There was a boy that had a crush on me in high school. He was a year younger than me, so I dismissed him. It was flattering, but at the same time, annoying.

However, after a couple of failed marriages, I did think about him, and wished I hadn’t dismissed him. He was a nice guy, and probably would have treated me better.

Sometimes it can feel like a burden. I think the person more in love many times comes off as more needy. I think it happens a lot in parent child relationships. The parent is typically much more consciously aware of their love for their child, more freaked out and realistic about how horrific it would be to lose their child, while children take the relationship more for granted. When it is extremely obvious a parent’s main source of happiness is their children, or especially a specific child in the family, it puts a huge burden on that son or daughter to be responsible for that parents happiness.

In romantic relationships I think the person more in love can also seem needy, more desperate for interaction, connection, more insecure. The person less in love can feel stifled by it, or annoyed with it, or be apathetic about it.

When I was younger I wanted to be the one to feel in love. In the beginning of the relationship I was flattered a man wanted to pursue me, but then it can become a trap, the balance of power changes, and I have been in situations where I much more desperately wanted to be with them than them with me. It feels at the time like you love them incredibly intensely and they do no wrong, or wrongs just don’t compute in the foggy obsessed brain, and the pain of separation from them is agony. As I get older I kind of wish my husband seemed a little more desperate to be with me. For the most part the relationship is pretty balanced though.

Like @Skaggfacemutt, when I was in high school, this boy had a crush on me. I considered him a very close friend, and I loved him like a brother, but I definitely had no romantic feelings for him at all. He often told our mutual friends that he was “in love” with me, and often came up to me for friendly hugs. I had mixed reactions to his feelings. I felt a little guilty because I cared about this boy and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I thought about what it would be like for us two to begin a relationship, but it just didn’t appeal to me one bit. His crush was very flattering but also slightly annoying, too, as I felt suffocated. Sometimes I used to flirt with him playfully (it sounds mean but I was just a kid in school, remember), although he knew that was all he would get from me.

I also had a boyfriend a few years back. Our relationship was extremely brief, in fact I almost forgot about it until this question. We’d been together for a few weeks when he asked that awkward question: “What do you feel for me?” I told him I cared about him and was enjoying our time together and wanted to see where things went, when he suddenly became very pushy and said, “Don’t you love me? We’re boyfriend and girlfriend, after all.” I said that it felt too soon to consider this love, and he was offended and told me he loved me, and told me that I was supposed to love him too. About a week later we broke up. It was awkward, and I often wondered if it was weird for me not to return this person’s feelings. In the movies, when somebody loves someone who doesn’t return their feelings, I find myself thinking, “But how can you reject him when his love for you is so strong?” But in real life it doesn’t work like that. It’s just awkward and guilt-inducing.

@lookingglassx3 Thank you for your answer. Very much on target for what I was trying to find out about.

Do you ever think that if a similar situation happened, you would handle it any differently?

There were two high school boys who crushed on me, at various times. One told me he loved me, the other asked me to marry him, oh… a couple of times a month for three years. I saw him once after Graduation and he asked me to marry him again – with his girlfriend there. Somehow it wasn’t at all weird or creepy, which makes no sense, but that’s the way it was.

I considered both good friends, but that’s about it. At the time, I was a religious fundamentalist, and both of these boys were atheist. I fancied myself in love with my best friend from church, who turned out (ten years later) to be flamboyantly gay.

Guess I deserved it.

Looking back, if I hadn’t had my head up Kevin’s arse (or god’s), I might have noticed Justin or William a little more. They were both brilliantly intelligent sweethearts, and I hope they found partners that made them much more happy than I ever tried to.

This was the ultimate in awkward for me. I dated a guy in college that I was friends with for a year before we started dating. I knew I didn’t like him beyond a friend, but he was really into me and I thought that I would develop deeper feelings for him over time. We dated for 9 months and I just never got to that next level, meanwhile, he grew to love me. I felt bad the whole time that I didn’t feel the same way about him, because he was a good friend. I knew I was going to hurt him either way, if we stayed together or if I broke it off. But I couldn’t stay in that relationship anymore. So I broke it off and lost a friend. Lessons learned…..
In retrospect, I wouldn’t have gotten into a relationship with him and just stayed friends.

When we first started dating, my ex said “whoever loves least has all the power in the relationship.” At that time she was more committed to me than I to her. But we were married for fifteen years, and I remained committed until she became abusive.

Move forward to my girlfriend who is moving away. I’ve been much more invested in the totality of a relationship than she has. Until she started a new job that pays much more than she was earning, she was dependent on me in various ways, and wasn’t resentful but did not like it. And while she still values me and considers me a best friend, she is much less committed to keeping the relationship alive. It’s hard.

The one situation in which it was clear that she loved me much more was the woman I dated before I met my ex wife. It hurt her when I broke up with her She is now a Facebook friend and we talk regularly. She still loves me but moved cross country many years ago. And she realizes now that if we had married at the emotional maturity I was then, we wouldn’t have lasted. But I have made amends with her.

I’m in @Skaggfacemutt ‘s camp. While I think mutuality is very important, minus the normal ebbs and flows of all relationships, I once dumped a really nice guy, in favor of the bad boy, which I married, of course hoping he would change. Gah…maddening how stupid young women can be. lol
I had a guy that adored me before meeting my ex husband. He would spend his lunch hour commuting across town just to leave me flowers or a note on my door, he was the nicest guy ever, and what’d I do, I picked the asshole. Thank God those days are long gone and nice will always trump “exciting.” haha

This was my first relationship. It was sad when I finally realized that I truly did not have strong feelings for him. He was pretty wrapped up in me. I broke it off and he was really upset and I felt terrible about it, but I didn’t miss him at all.

Happens to me all the time. Constant. I find it understandable and easy to bear

@wundayatta Hmm…if a similar situation happened with the whole unrequited crush thing, then I definitely wouldn’t flirt with the person crushing on me, like I did in high school. I’d try to be friendlier, with ‘friend’ being the operative part of that word, to spare the person’s feelings.

As for the relationship… I don’t think I would handle that situation any differently. I was straight with him about what I felt and if I’d have lied, he’d have only got hurt in the long run.

@Coloma My feelings exactly. Sigh…if only we could put an old head on young shoulders.

I must say…and this will sound bad…but I wasn’t impressed and felt highly annoyed by two particular persons who confessed their love for me. That was the last thing I wanted to hear and I cut them completely off. One was bi-polar and the other always played the ‘victim.’

However, Ive had charming kind boys as well as impulsive bad boys who would confess their feelings for me and I wouldn’t reciprocate…and ofcourse things get awkward, the person becomes passive aggressive and you end up feeling guilty!

You won’t believe this, but after I wrote my answer to this question, I decided to try to find that guy from high school on facebook. II didn’t find him, but I found his son. Just as I suspected, he became a nice, successful family man, working as a heavy-duty mechanic, taking his sons hunting and fishing.

@snapdragon24 Oh, I have had plenty of those, too, and never gave them a second thought. But this guy – he was different. I wouldn’t give him a chance because he wasn’t “cool”, you know. Like @Coloma , said, the smart-mouth, cocky punks were the “cool” kids. He was kind of geeky and it wouldn’t have impressed any of my friends if I dated him. What an idiot I was!!!

So I send a small message to his son to say “hi” to the guy, and to tell him that I regret not dating him. I thought it might make his day.

Nice @Skaggfacemutt! That was sweet of you.