How to get over unrequited love
if you can't live it, write it
And you can tell everybody This is your song It may be quite simple, but Now that it's done I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind That I put down in words How wonderful life is While you're in the world
I wrote ‘I’m sorry I didn’t sleep with you’ to mourn the loss of a could-be lover. I didn’t start writing until a couple of years ago when I began this Substack and it was very much a pressure valve for unexpressed feelings. When I was younger, my art of choice was painting (acting and dancing also featured). When I was ill with unrequited love, I would lock myself in my bedroom and paint portraits of the boys who would haunt my heart.
Haunched over my canvases and aquarelle pads, I would zoom in on the Facebook photos of my boys and copy every dimple, freckle, and crevice of their faces. I would count their tiny boy lashes and not rest till I found the exact combination of shades for every strand of hair. Burnt Umber. Raw Umber. Ivory black. I studied those motherfuckers like the bible.
By the time I finished each portrait, I would go to bed completely exhausted and satisfied. The attention and care I put into my portraits in the physical world would expend the libidinal energy tormenting me. I’d feel like I had taken what I wanted: I had made my object of desire mine (I know you can’t fuck a portrait, but remember boys for women it’s not all about sex). Our crushes are so often projections of our imagination anyway. My awe of the boys waned, but I always found my art worth obsessing over.
I no longer paint, but I write. I go through exactly the same process when a liaison animates me so violently that I have to do something about it, or I’ll burst. I become disillusioned and disappointed at the flesh-and-blood men who inspire my writing but I never get over how they made me feel. My graceless, ungrateful Muses, where would I be without them? Less stressed? Maybe. Fat and boring? Definitely.
Does that make me a bad feminist? Au contraire. The warrior nation of the Spartans waged their most mythical war for a woman. Why do we lionise testosterone but coddle estrogen?
A man I had been smitten with released his debut memoir recently. When he ended things, he said he was moving to France to write the book- I found comfort in the fact that the book part was real. A little over a decade older, he had sprinted past me in his career; Googling his name felt like self‑inflicted torture. He once confessed that the women he dates grow livid when they read online the criticism he faced at the height of his power. My fury, though, stemmed from a different source: I raged at how accomplished he’d been at my age. His brief was among the toughest, yet in every interview, he never put a foot wrong. His arguments unfurled effortlessly, and he looked every inch the part.
When he dumped me, it wasn’t just romantic rejection; it was an existential audit. A two-tier justice verdict announcing, you were good enough to sleep with him, but“You are not, in fact, him.”
I am nothing if not a graceful reject, so I pre-ordered his book when it was announced. Pre-order numbers matter a lot in determining how many books bookstores decide to stock. It arrived and gathered dust #selfcare. Then, of course, he released an audiobook, narrated by himself. Why merely write your myth when you can also whisper it into the eardrums of the nation that misunderstood you.
Two years had passed since I had last seen him. My ego’s bruises developed from the green of envy to the yellow of grace. I stoically listened to the voice that’s more authoritative than mine, reading prose that’s written with more confidence and clarity than I write, describing a career that was built with the discipline and ambition I aspire to.
Did it hurt, listening to the voice of a man whose talent I envied and whose affection I couldn’t keep? A little. But it was also perversely satisfying- like prodding the dull throb of a loose tooth that’s begging to be taken out of its misery.
I have written here before that you should not be angry when lovers reject you. You should resist the temptation to demonise the people you have spent your libidinal energy idolising. Clever men don’t become dull when they ghost you. They become your motivation and someone else’s problem.
When I was done, I left a glowing anonymous review on Goodreads, knowing that while men don’t come back, karma might.
It is so easy to feel gloomy about all the former flames you don’t lie next to, the apartments you don’t go home to, the cars you don’t have keys for, the books you didn’t or couldn’t write, the cats you got to feed but never stroked. But isn’t it even a little bit comforting that you share the Earth with all those amazing beings and things other beings created? You didn’t write War and Piece, but you can read it. You can’t afford that dress, but you can complement the woman wearing it. Even the most talented performers must come to terms with not always being the ones most worth clapping for.
Our capacity to feel love injects magic into everyday life. Love transforms plain boys and girls into tinpot tyrants dealing psychic shocks we never consented to. It hurts, but my God, don’t we ache for it?
S
xx
"κι έλεγα μέσα μου ότι απ’ όλους τους κόσμους, απ’ όλα τ’ αστέρια που είναι κόσμοι, ίσως η γη νάταν η ωραιότερη." "and I'd tell myself that of all the worlds, of all the stars which are worlds, perhaps Earth was the most beautiful one." ~From Margarita Liberaki’s 1946 novel "ta psathina kapela" (the straw hats).
These are no doubt deep insights about how to constructively dissipate the angst of romantic loss. But I also, at a point in the article, suddenly felt a sharp sense that your wisdom about matters of this nature has to come from a masochistic core. But yours is more of a stoic masochism than the self-pitying type. Of course, most women are of the latter variety (I believe masochism is a natural element in all feminine psyche while sadism is predominantly a masculine trait). Good luck characterizing yourself successfully from this description!
Your advice piece should have been titled: How I Get Over Unrequited Love. To resort to your suggested methods, the unfortunate 'loser' in the game of love would have to possess an artistic skill or at least an artistic temperament, coupled, maybe, with some crude sensibility for the philosophical. Your method is not meant for majority of people and only a few could aspire to it. There's a reason why you were neither broken nor damaged by your adolescent years!!! For most people, to deal with Unrequited Love, they simply look to the mundane while hoping for time and chance to heal them.
Oh Stella, you were a tortured soul in your teenage years! But, as they say, if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, and you learn something from all relationships.
Your paintings are exceptional, you are indeed a talented lady. Maybe you can go back to it when you’re a bit older.
Very entertaining reading, maybe you could tell us a few of the stories of your old relationships and why you think they went wrong. Maybe when relationships end you can just say it’s their loss ( which it would be) and look forward to better things.