Unrequited Friendship

Much ado has been made over the years when it comes to the concept of unrequited love. I've been on both sides of that tête à tête so I have seen that story play out to its bitter end. I don't believe enough has been said however on the concept of unrequited friendship. The idea that a friendship exists and persists because of the efforts of one but not both sides.

It's easy to think that a friendship would fall apart quite quickly if one person didn't make any effort, the other would lose interest eventually, but unrequited friendships persist for the same reason that unrequited love often persists, that is, there isn't a complete lack of interest from one side but rather a trickle of interest that pales in comparison to the river of emotion that comes from the other side.

It's also easy to judge the one who gives as desperate for an emotional connection but the opposite is usually the case, people who fall in unrequited love aren't usually lonely, their fixation isn't usually isolated, if anything, the recipient or the subject of desire is much more likely to be emotionally starved. Someone who expresses love freely is much more likely to have many other emotional connections whereas someone who is on the receiving end of unrequited love is usually reluctant to explicitly dismiss the attention which is a sign that they are emotionally starved to the point where they will accept the emotional connection of someone they feel nothing for, in order to feel loved. In cases where they do explicitly reject their admirer and they still persist then we cross the line into stalking and obsession which is an entirely different conversation that revolves around consent.

Unrequited love that persists and is sustained over time is almost always consensual, where the recipient rather than outright rejecting their admirer chooses to give them trickles of affection that feeds their desire, but just enough to sustain it, nothing more. They want to continue feeling loved but they don't want to progress that love to anything that requires a commitment or substantive action on their part. This same pattern of behaviour holds true with unrequited friendships. The recipient is often an individual who struggles to maintain social connections with others and is reluctant to explicitly reject the friendship as a result because they are starved of a social connection and reluctant to cut off what is sometimes the only source of attention they get. Again the person who gives this attention is often someone who maintains many healthy social connections and their continued effort reflects their experience and once more, where there is outright rejection and they do persist then we get into the same area of obsession and consent but through a different lens, another perspective.

As with unrequited love however, unrequited friendships are consensual, just heavily imbalanced.

Relationships don't have to be transactional, where one person gives and another takes and then exchanges by giving in return. Relationships that boil down to this basis are often exploitive in some way even if it isn't obvious at first, even still exploitive relationships can be consensual where both sides agree to it and both sides get something out of the exchange, but one side is taking advantage of the other's position.

The interesting thing about this whole conversation is that you can only accurately judge how balanced a friendship or any emotional connection is, and subsequently whether or not it is exploitive, by knowing more about both people involved in the connection, where one person is emotionally reticent however this becomes difficult to judge because you don't know their motivations.

I've had high maintenance friendships before, where a lot of effort had to be put into keeping those friendships functional. I've had low maintenance friendships too, where little effort is needed to maintain the connection other than the occasional conversation, texts, phone calls, outings, etc. I've also had what I and my neurodiverse friends would call "no maintenance" friendships, these are friendships that require no maintenance at all; there will be times we talk every day, and times where we don't speak for weeks or months and pick up exactly where we left off like nothing happened. These relationships aren't for everyone, that much I understand, there is an apparent detachment at first glance but the more you probe this connection the more you see that isn't the case, but rather a mutual recognition of each others' need for space is present and an understanding of each others' motivations.

Unrequited friendships are an oddity, because for all intents and purposes there is a desire to maintain that connection expressed by one side, a reluctance expressed by the other, and the inability to let the two disconnect caused by the recipient continuing to trickle interest in the friendship whenever they perceive it as broken.

For me personally when I have ended up in this position the only option I could pursue for the sake of my own sanity was to ghost the other person because I don't have time for the games people play. As I said above I've had friendships that require various levels of maintenance that isn't the issue, communication is the issue. Make up your mind whether you want me in your life or not and be direct with me and tell me, because I will have made it abundantly clear that I want you in mine, if that reciprocation isn't there I won't try and stay where I don't feel like I am wanted.

They are not trying to pursue a friendship with you because they have no other friends, how low is your self esteem that you think the only reason someone would be interested in you is because they have no other option?