Customer Reviews

Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the best books a person in an uneven relationship could read. It is one of the few books (maybe the only one) that delves into what it is like to be a rejector, which is helpful for readers on both sides of the relationship. It also addresses the hidden assumptions about love and relationships can create problems when a new relationship fails or begins to falter. The book is based on the authors' research and findings from social psychology. The tone is academic but it is engaging because the subject matter is handled so well. The information is invaluable, because for most sensitive readers looking for direction in such a relationship, knowing what the other person is probably feeling gives you a better idea of what to do. So, for example, some persistence in a potential love relationship can be flattering, but once you start getting signals to stop, the harder you make the rejector work to get rid of you, the more they are going to dislike you. Lessions like this are punctuated with first person accounts that bring them to life. Warning: there are no sidebars, pictures, diagrams or funny quotes, and there are no bullet points "do's and don'ts" that you might find in a regular trade paperback on the topic. Nevertheless, this book does a real service.

This book seems to be taken from someone's PhD thesis. It strikes a very academic tone which may be appropriate in some settings but to a general reader seems to reduce genuine feelings to nearly useless abstractions. For example, the book asserts that people are usually attracted to people who are more attractive than they are, as though there were some universal, absolute scale.

More importantly though, the study is based on interviews with undergraduates. I find this to be a limited perspective on the breadth of human experience that can fall under the topic of "Unrequited Love."

Still, some of the insights are revealing. Popular convention does not acknowledge how uncomfortable it can be to have to reject someone and it is useful to hear that side of it.

If you are in unrequited love I firmly do not recommend this book. For all others I'm giving a neutral recommendation. For those in unrequited love (like me) you are probably thinking to yourself that this book will help you to see how your loved one feels or even bring you closer to them. Or falling in love might have taken you so strongly in its grasps that suddenly the topic is endlessly interesting. Either way all you are going to get out of this book are excuses or reasons to feel depressed, hopeless, insane and even somewhat evil dare I say. It is interspersed with some interesting statistics however they are let down by poor experimental design and are not all that valid (this is not just some biased opinion, I'm actually a psych Ph.D). You know as well as the next person that how you feel is not in your long term best interests and that you no doubt need to address the issue. We can all empathise to some extent with the beloved and how difficult it must be for them. But this book unfortunately takes this issue too far and casts those in unrequited love in a very dark light. It actually gives the impression that the author was once on the receiving end of unwanted affection and they were obviously very uncomfortable and unforgiving. As though they blamed the other person. Anyway, people who have only been on the receiving end may well feel empowered and enjoy the book but for those on the other side you should look elsewhere. Love Sick by Frank Tallis is well worth a read if this topic is of interest.

If you've been freshly rejected and looking for some guidance on how to heal your broken heart, some consolation, or some small hint of hope that there is still a chance to win back your lost love then this book is not for you.

It's for people who have accepted the fact that your target of unrequited love is never going to reciprocate and wants to understand what happened before moving on. But as your read, you will see that you already know in your heart what happened and why you did what you felt you had to do at the time you did it.

In part it does explain or clarify some cloudy aspects of unrequited love. But for most part these are things you already knew and felt but have refused to accept. You will nod your head in agreement as you read about certain situations from other rejected tortured souls as well as from the viewpoint of the rejectors.

So for those reading this review who are still hopeful for a relationship with their target of unrequited love...forget it, it's never going to happen. This comes straight from the mouths of the rejectors interviewed in the book but you already knew that, didn't you?

This book only confirms what you already felt and knew.

I can't believe I paid so much money for such a load of hooey. The book has no new ideas, no new insights, no nuthin'. You could say the book broke my heart, and for a heck of a lot of money.

Carefully researched and very interesting-this is a rare look into the nature of unrequited love from both points of view. Well written and insightful.

This is a book so good that I bought it after having had access to a free inter-library loan copy. Tremendous insights. Mesa AZ

This book is pointless. It's a simple result of surveys with author's suggestions. Put yourself into position of a would-be lover and a rejector, and you've read the whole book. If you're heartbroken and looking for understanding, this book will disappoint you. It mainly focuses on the other side of unrequited love, the rejector, and seems to defend (using the data) that position as more hurt by the experience. At one point it even compared the would-be lover to a criminal! That definitely does not reflect the whole society. The only thing this book helped me realize is that romantic love is very much a selfish thing.