How “teaching person ‘how to love'” may render you unloved

Posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2020 at 4:21 am in Australia - Last edit on April 5, 2025 Tags: love, Narcissism

I am going to make yet another attempt in explaining how a dynamic between a person who is “in 100%” and someone who is not invested the relationship at all work, and how they still may wind up in a friendship or even married. So just to identify who I’m talking to, first.

In your relationship, do you feel like:

You feel like you have to constantly fight for their attention, to make them react to you somehow?
You need to put in all the effort yourself to keep the relationship going?
Do you feel like if you don’t call them, they won’t call you?
Do you also feel like it would feel like the sweetest thing in the world if this person would finally make a real commitment to you?
Do you feel like they are ‘chasing after some elusive dream’, when you’re right there willing to be their friend or a lover?
Do you fear someone more interesting, wealthy, beautiful, or sexual than you might steal them away from you?
Do you feel like you’re constantly having to guard your territory in order to keep your taps on this person?
Do you feel unappreciated and unloved by this person, but you don’t understand why?
Do you feel they are ungrateful to you even though you’re putting so much effort into the relationship and they just don’t seem to care?
Do you feel like you have to constantly remind them that a) you exist b) they’ll never find who they are looking for or c) that they are obligated to making your life better?
Do you feel like you are offering true love and they just don’t realize this… at all?
You may have initially felt super lucky that they gave you the time of day, didn’t really understand why they were nice to you (and liked you) but you decided it’s not your business to contemplate why they love you, as long as they do. Good for you, right?
Do you feel like they are making up stories to save face claiming they don’t love you, when in fact, they’re just scared you don’t love them back?
Have you ever wondered if that person is a narcissist or a psychopath?
Do you feel like you have to teach them, almost by hand, how to take care of you or how to show you love, affection, and appreciation?

If this sounds like your relationship, read on. This is a very common relationship problem, but you’ll be quite surprised where the problem lies. It’s solvable, but not in the way you’ve tried to solve it – if it was, it would be fixed by now, wouldn’t it?

Now, let’s try this.

Have you ever been in a situation where you feel…

A person you are not interested in is trying hard to get your attention, to get a date with you, or is acting like your friend even though you feel very lukewarm or even indifferent toward them?
Have you ever felt frustrated because this person doesn’t understand they are WAY out of your league, and they should understand that this relationship will never work!
Do you know how it feels to try and gently let someone down so you don’t hurt their feelings more than required, but they’re simply not hearing the message?
Do you feel like that person is pushing themselves into your company when they are not really welcome?
Have you ever gone on a date or hung out with someone like that just to “throw them a bone”, so to speak? It’s likely you actually haven’t done this, which would be the reason for the situation you find yourself in.

If you would NEVER go/hang out with someone you don’t like, you don’t understand why someone else would

A lot of people feel like they have to “give people a chance” because they’ve been accused of being “an elitist” or “unrealistic” in their expectations of other people. So eventually, they agree to go on a date with someone who is strongly pursuing them even though they really don’t want to. These people are likely to try and give you SOMETHING so you’d stop asking because OBVIOUSLY they weren’t enjoying their time, or it was obvious you shouldn’t be together or, obviously, your relationship is broken if it once was OK.

When someone often winds up in situations where others are trying hard to monopolize their time and keep them from meeting new people out of jealousy, they may have trouble, due to spiritual effects of this, of finding who they actually want to wind up with, and therefore, they will have to fill that empty space with whoever is available to them… And if it happens to be a person who they really don’t like but who seems overly enthusiastic about a relationship with them, they may decide that “OK, if you want it THAT BAD, I may go out with you even though I’m not that keen on the idea at all.”

However, if you are the kind of a person who would NEVER GIVE AN INCH to a person who they don’t want, you would feel like once someone does that for you, it’s a sign of them having been impressed by something you’ve done, and this is the reward of it all. In reality, they may have just gotten tired fighting you and waiting for something more deep and meaningful to come their way. So they’re settling on you, rather than settling down with you.

Now, those feels up the top, let me explain what they actually mean.

The following may get rough, but please be brave.

You feel like you have to constantly fight for their attention, to make them react to you somehow?

This is a sign that when there are more interesting people around them, their attention is naturally drawn to them rather than you. This means they’ll have time for you when they have nothing else on their plate, and they feel that since you NEED their attention so much, they’ll give it to you when they have time for you or you’ve managed to make them feel guilty enough to give you some attention.

You need to put in all the effort yourself to keep the relationship going?

This is because they are not truly invested in the relationship, in other words, they don’t want the relationship. To them, the relationship you have may feel more like a burden like a gift, and they are spending as little time and effort as possible to keep you from thinking they are a selfish asshole – the relationship you have, to them, is simply something they feel obligated to maintain so they don’t ruin their reputation in the eyes of other people by being mean and dismissive of someone who clearly loves them.

Do you feel like if you don’t call them, they won’t call you?

They are trying to “ghost you” out of their life. In other words, they feel it would be WAY TOO rude to NEVER talk to you if you talk to them, but they feel that if they limit your contact a lot, eventually, you’ll get bored trying and move onto people who are easier to get a hold onto and easier to get attention from.

Do you also feel like it would feel like the sweetest thing in the world if this person would finally make a real commitment to you?

You have probably gotten attention from someone who is a bit out of your league. You feel you got so close to someone who you feel lucky to know, but the feelings may not be mutual at all. So when they are dodging you, the message is they are not truly GOING to make a commitment to you, because… They want someone from their own league.

They may have not realized that you’d even take their attention seriously – and if they were drunk at a time, just remember people get a bit more carelessly affectionate when drunk – they’ll stop worrying about the fallout and they may say and do things from a fantasy mode, where you’re basically an avatar to someone they’re hoping you are, and they are not talking to you but someone they wish you were… But who they have either not met yet or who they have problems with.

People can even FORCE themselves to do this romantic performance to convince themselves they’re capable of falling in love with someone who is not superficially beautiful for example, or otherwise exactly what they were hoping for, but often… Always, these attempts fail.

Do you feel like they are ‘chasing after some elusive dream’ when you’re right there willing to be their friend or a lover?

This… Is them truly wanting someone from their own league, not an elusive dream? And even if they were chasing after something you don’t think they have a chance of finding… Honey, so are you when you’re chasing them.

Do you fear someone more interesting, wealthy, beautiful, or sexual than you might steal them away from you?

If you fear this, they probably can, because that’s who they are interested in, and you can’t compete… The other option is that you are both naturally polygamous and you’ve both gotten used to living in a monogamous lifestyle through your previous incarnations, which messes with this, but if other signs apply as well…

Do you feel like you’re constantly having to guard your territory in order to keep your taps on this person?

Is it a good feeling or a bad feeling? Sometimes naturally polygamous people enjoy this feeling, but if it’s more about them NEVER TRULY being there when you are together… Polygamous people can have DEEP connections with the person they’re with… And with another person, once they’re with them. But if you feel they are NEVER TRULY WITH YOU when they are, polygamy may not be enough of an explanation as to what’s going on, but the truth is more likely that they don’t really want you as a partner, lover, or a friend.

Do you feel unappreciated and unloved by this person, but you don’t understand why?

Is it possible you don’t want to understand the real reason? They feel burdened by your love, not secured or uplifted by it but burdened and even weirded out..?

Do you feel they are ungrateful to you even though you’re putting so much effort into the relationship and they just don’t seem to care?

Have you ever been on the other side of this before? Someone waits on you hand and foot and you wonder why they bother? So you try not to reward the behavior by acknowledging it, and if you do, it’s out of sheer guilt of having you do something for them all the time and they feel like they have to, in the same sense as paying for a service, give you something in return, not for love or appreciation for you.

Do you feel like you have to constantly remind them that a) you exist b) they’ll never find who they are looking for or c) that they are obligated to making your life better?

When someone loves you, the one thing you feel is that you TRULY don’t have to fight for their attention. You feel like with everyone else, you kinda have to do cartwheels for their attention, but the people who love you, you can just sit there doing nothing special and they still seem to ENJOY your company and simply looking at you. That’s what it feels to be loved. If you need to do cartwheels for someone’s attention, they simply don’t care about you very much.

Do you feel like you are offering true love and they just don’t realize this… at all?

True love, honey, can never be one-sided UNLESS it’s completely non-possessive and selfless, surrendered. True love may be onesided only when the person in love FULLY ACCEPTS the fact they may never be loved back, and they STILL decide to devote their life to the love of that person. They feel that their life will be better simply being aware of that other person’s existence, and be grateful for living on the same planet, the same time in history as that person. And one-sided true love only wants that person to be happy, whether it measn they are a contributing factor to that person’s happiness or not, and if they felt they were a negative aspect in that person’s life, they’d immediately put distance in between themselves and that person. True love is always selfless and feels AMAZINGLY LUCKY, not short-changed if that love isn’t returned. (A person may feel short-changed in the happiness they feel about being around another person, which would describe the feelings of this person you’re with now.)

If this is NOT the way you feel, this isn’t true love anyway, not even one-sidedly.

You may have initially felt super lucky that they gave you the time of day, didn’t really understand why they were nice to you (and liked you) but you decided it’s not your business to contemplate why they love you, as long as they do. Good for you, right?

Maybe you should think back to that time when you became involved (in whatever sense that is), and see if they actually LIKED YOU, or were they going through something that made them lower their bar for the company a little too far… Temporarily? Just because you were there when they needed someone, doesn’t make them fall in love with you forever. Otherwise, everyone’s love would be just a result of having someone to talk to when you’re feeling low. That’s a very cheap way of finding love.

Do you feel like they are making up stories to save face claiming they don’t love you, when in fact, they’re just scared you don’t love them back?

If you have the habit of coming up stories to explain that you are not really serious about someone when you realize they didn’t love you, you may interpret someone’s real reasons for excuses. Now. Have you told them you loved them? Do you have A REALISTIC reason to believe they didn’t believe you when you did?

Do you think it would be possible that YOU are making up excuses for yourself, rather than the other way around? Is it possible they actually realized they made a connection to you when they shouldn’t have, they feel sorry they’ve done that, but they must now undo the connection?

Have you ever wondered if that person is a narcissist or a psychopath?

This often comes up as a possible explanation for people who are unwilling to face the real answer: This person isn’t in love with you. Just because they cannot truly love you, doesn’t mean they cannot love ANYBODY. And just because a person is incapable of loving SOME people, doesn’t make them neither a narcissist nor a psychopath. The label only sticks if they cannot feel love toward ANYONE or ANYTHING.

Do you feel like you have to teach them, almost by hand, how to take care of you or how to show you love, affection, and appreciation?

The reason why they seem “incapable” of showing you love is probably because they don’t, actually, love you. Acts of love are rather automatic when love is real. It’s terribly difficult to stop oneself from expressing love to someone you adore, and sometimes people have a hard time saying ALL THE nice things they think about you without it actually meaning they are IN LOVE with you, they’re just a person who likes to encourage others and make them feel good about themselves, without realizing that this character trait is sometimes misconstrued as a show of actual love or romantic interest.

So, the reason why the lesson doesn’t stick is that they don’t FEEL the love that you require them to show them. Love is a feeling, not an action, and if the feeling is missing, then the action will feel forced or non-genuine.

Hope this post gives you peace, rather than anguish

Hopefully, you can put this person behind you, if the above sounds true. You may feel responsible for them but don’t. Clearly, they don’t need you. If they do, they’ll come chasing after you when you go. Still, they also may chase you to ask you if they offended you, without realizing, at all, that you’re actually seriously in love with them. They may take your shows of affection as a simple personality trait and don’t realize it’s not just the way you are.

Sometimes you may feel like it is put up to you to teach this person to love, but… Sometimes you’d do them a bigger favor by letting them go… and yourself, as well.

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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.

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