15 Lessons Learned About Life And Love From Loving A Boy Who Doesn’t Love Me Back

1. True love exists.

And it doesn’t have prerequisites, limitations, restrictions, labels. It can’t be trapped in a box (or a relationship). It is free, infinite, unconditional. It flows forth endlessly, without the need to be reciprocated. Love loves, because it loves. If it doesn’t, it isn’t love.

2. If it is conditional, it isn’t love.

If one’s “love” is restricted in some way by conditions, rules, restrictions, limitations, even labels (such as this person having this relationship with me), then it isn’t true love.

For instance, if I love someone, but s/he doesn’t reciprocate for whatever reason, I am only loving them because I want love from them. I only give because I want to take. Which is a selfish kind of love. I only love my idea of love, and if that idea isn’t respected and upholded by all others, I disappear. This isn’t true love.

3. Love isn’t just hugs and kisses.

Love is a deep, potent and powerful force, not simply expressed just through hugs, kisses, and I love you’s. Sometimes it takes the form of hurting. Sometimes it takes the form of leaving. Sometimes it takes the form of growing. But despite its form, love always resonates with the truth, because that is what it is at its essence.

4. Loving people as they are allows them to grow to their highest self.

When we celebrate people’s existence, we give them the confidence, support, love and care necessary for them to dwell in an “inner” environment that allows them to nurture their potential. And to do so and see it in action is such a beautiful thing.

5. Love is healing and transformative for both ends.

True love heals even the mightiest wounds. It is one of the greatest healers, fostering growth, development, and transformation both in the person giving love, and the person receiving it. It works in magical ways we cannot see.

6. Love comes in so many forms.

Love isn’t at all grandiose. It sometimes is. Like huge ceremonial weddings. But sometimes love is shown in the little and small in our lives; a touch of the shoulder, a how are you, a watch your step, an are you okay?, a prepared meal, a gaze.

7. Love is a powerful force.

It allows us to truck through the enormity and hardship of our struggles with the perseverance and strength necessary for the human spirit to survive. It is incredible what we can tolerate when love is on our side.

8. Love helps us find meaning in life.

“The salvation of man is through love and in love.” — Victor E. Frankl

9. Love is vulnerable yet mighty.

It takes might of the ego to remain hard to the world, but it takes might of the spirit to open one’s heart to the world and have the willingness to be vulnerable.

It takes so much courage to be vulnerable because it requires one to love onself enough to expose the intimacies of his soul.

And to be vulnerable is to be mighty because it is rare for one ot achieve this kind of realness and rawness in life.

10. Love is ultimate.

Love is the highest level of being. It is, as far as being a human being is concerned, the highest truth. What greater law is there than love? What greater authority is there than love? What greater aspiration is there than to be loving? What greater gift? Love is a blessing, a guide, a treasure to the soul. Find me something more worthy than love and I will give my life to it. But until then, love has my heart.

11. Everything happens for a reason.

I’ve learned, along this path of life, that every situation presented to us is an opportunity for us to reach for and grow into our highest selves. And often, it is the worst situations that present to us the greatest growth. It is our struggling through the fires of hardship that forges the human spirit.

Everything occurs for a reason. A reason we may not be able to understand right now. But as we look back and piece together the pieces of our lives, it is then will we find meaning in our hardship.

12. I am loved.

I don’t need anyone or anything to love me because I love myself. Although it is a nice bonus to be loved dearly by a beloved, I am acutely aware of the love available to me simply by being open to life.

The sun, the grass, the wind, the trees; they all love me in their own way.

I am loved. You are too.

13. You cannot change anything outside of you.

I cannot make the boy I love love me back the way I want him to. I can only love him for who and everything he is, and enjoy my giving it to him. To wish for something that is not there is to produce suffering.

Similarly in life, we cannot change external forces, but we can change our perception towards them. We cannot change a situation that happens to us, including those that have happened in the past, but we can change how we feel about them.

14. Who are we without others?

He has taught me the value and importance of relationships. Without others, who are we? We are social creatures that crave deep love and communion. He has taught me to nurture and celebrate my relationships, as if they were precious plants.

15. Love is life.

There is no life without love, and no love without life.