Unrequited Love, Self-victimisation and the Target of Appropriate Resentment

Abstract

In "Tragedy and Resentment" Ulrika Carlsson claims that there are cases when we are justified to feel non-moral resentment against someone who harms us without wronging us, when the harm either consists in their attitude towards us or in the emotional suffering triggered by their attitudes. Since they had no duty to protect us from harm, the objectionable attitude is not disrespect but a failure to show love, admiration, or appreciation for us. I explain why unrequited love is the wrong example to use when arguing for the possibility of justified non-moral resentment -and why, therefore, Carlsson's claim remains unsubstantiated. Pace Carlsson, people who fail to return our love are not best described as harming us, but as merely failing to benefit us by saving us from harm. Moreover, their role in the causal chain that results in our coming to harm is insufficient to warrant our resentment; more plausibly, we ourselves play a greater and more direct causal role in this process. This is a welcome result: Responding with (non-moral) resentment to someone's failure to return our love indicates that our love has not taken the form of a genuine gift. When we put conditions on successful gifting by allowing for justified resentment if the gift is not returned we are not in fact giving gifts but making a bid for an exchange: I love you so that you love me back.

Problematics of Unrequited Love in the Modern Javanese Song “Klebus” by Ngatmombilung (Critical Discourse Analysis)

“…The response to dealing with the experience of unrequited love is determined by one's emotional maturity. If a person does not have good emotional intelligence, the phenomenon of unrequited love can cause other problems, namely hatred [7]. Usually, people who are still in the zone of denial about rejection, especially the rejection of love, will act very hatefully towards those who have rejected them.…”

“…The results of this study indicate that these three things can be used as mediation for the mental health of someone who experiences heartache due to unrequited love. Gheaus' research [7] regarding unrequited love shows that the tragedy of unrequited love felt by someone who has sincerely struggled can actually have an impact in the form of hatred. Meanwhile, Namira and Setiasari [5] conducted research on five Billie Eilish songs that contain unrequited love in terms of the imagery aspect of Perrine's theory and Kennedy and Giola's biographical.…”

The Roles of Romantic Beliefs and Imagined Interaction in Unrequited Love

“…Unrequited love has long been a popular subject of art and literature, and approximately 80% of people have experienced unrequited romantic attraction at a certain point of time (Motley et al, 2008). Despite the prevalence of this particular form of romantic love, most of the investigation into this subject is in the areas of humanity (e.g., Gheaus, 2021), philosophy (e.g., Protasi, 2016), literary criticism (e.g., Dampier, 2021), and psychiatry (e.g., Fishman et al, 1993). The social scientific literature of unrequited love is limited in contrast to the abundant mutual love research.…”