Unrequited love

Unrequited love is a love which is not reciprocated, one-sided or more generally unequal, resulting in a yearning for more complete love. Lovesickness is the resulting mental state. This might occur in a context where little or no relationship exists between the participants (even as in parasocial love for a celebrity), or it might occur inside a relationship with unequal love, commitment or effort. Unequal (unrequited) love is more common than equal love. Reciprocal love is called "redamancy".

Unrequited love generally pertains to the romantic, passionate, infatuated, obsessive or limerent variety of love (also called "being in love"): a state which is conceptualized as a motivation or drive. This state is commonly distinguished from other types of love: companionate love (or attachment) and compassionate love (or agape).

According to the psychologist Dorothy Tennov, the state of "being in love" is distinguishable from the many other uses of the word "love" (such as caring or concern), for: 'Affection and fondness have no "objective"; they simply exist as feelings in which you are disposed toward actions to which the recipient might or might not respond.' The psychiatrist Eric Berne said in his 1970 book Sex in Human Loving that "Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner."

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