Unrequited (Essay)
Unrequited love
To me, it's nothing but a one-man cult
And cyanide in my styrofoam cup.
-Frank Ocean.
The feeling of loving something— or someone—so much, that you can’t obtain or hold is similar to trying to change channels without batteries in your remote. No matter how hard you try to control and switch, you ultimately end up frustrated, desperate, and unable to dampen the feeling of disappointment. Love is a very human feeling, but yearning for connection that is often out of reach for many, kills. With social media having the capacity to dictate pop culture and trends—many find themselves feeling like romance is dead. However, often we try to find solace in prickly waves of spikes and wonder why pain is inevitable. In my own experience, I’ve loved the idea of romance so much, but often end up the antagonist in someone’s story. But what if they never viewed you in such light in the first place? This is the paradoxical nature of unrequited love because no matter how pure the intentions may be, hurt is often the end result. See, we long for love and in doing so, we hurt ourselves and others chasing something that was never really ours to begin with.
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It’s a Bad Religion?
In Bad Religion, Frank Ocean equates having unrequited love to religion. He states that loving someone who could never love you is oxymoronic. He explores the idea that he could “never make him love me” (Ocean 2012). This is a gut-wrenching, hopeless position. However, is unrequited love actually true connection, or is it just the idealization of romance that is shown in media? We feel so attached and anxious about a person that we have never held, but fail to realize the value of reciprocal connection, and the nuances of romance past the euphoric moments, and the smoke screen of laughs and kisses. The idea that we could never make them love us exemplifies the contradiction and disconnect between connection and idealization. The intense feeling and desire we hold towards them—is no more than a romanticized version of them we have created in our minds. We feel connection because we crave connection. This is often just confirmation bias, and is reflected through cherry-picked moments, and misinterpreted actions and words that we view as evidence, but is often just friendliness seen through rose-tinted glasses. This constant justification for our unrealistic feelings, is exhausting and can often lead us to be weary and even bring us to our knees.
Ocean goes on to say that “if it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion”. We yearn, and hurt to the point of exhausting and depriving ourselves of self-respect. Often resorting to begging, ultimately degrading ourselves just for a slim chance, or perhaps even a sliver of the attention and feelings we have towards them. This is no more than attempting to control the uncontrollable. They are the television to our faulty remote.
The reality that you can never make someone have feelings—you can only patiently wait until the wait feels like two heavy weights that hold down your heart. Hearing them talk about their crushes, when all you want is from them to crush on you. Yet we still live in blissful ignorance, hoping one day they will reciprocate. This often brings us to our knees, unable to concentrate on anything but our idealized enigma. This is a never ending cycle of a bad religion that only leads to hurt, and confusion.
Akin to a child joyfully waiting for Santa’s arrival, not realizing that he will never come. Still, every Christmas; they wait. Going through life trying their hardest to become the best version of themselves they can be—not because of intrinsic motivation, but because they want to fit the mold of what brands them good. This is all for Santa, reminiscent of changing who we are just for one person. We are attempting to make them love us, degrading our being in the process. We wait; hoping, praying, that the new hairstyle will be enough, our new clothes will be enough. We wait, not realizing how foolish it is to wait mold ourselves to one persons desires. We want them to view us as good and worthy of love.
This brings us to our knees, while we remain—waiting for the return of love. We don’t realize the components of love that go beyond attraction. This introduces more nuance to romance than just surface-level attraction.
There is often confusion between attraction and love, a misconception that because all of the cards align, traits are comparable; we must be meant to be. However, if one cannot love through adversity, and see past the guise of physical attraction—connection was never there to begin. This one person reverence is further explored throughout “Bad Religion” through a hypothetical conversation with a taxi driver.
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One Man Cult
Frank Ocean goes on to say “to me it’s nothin’ but a one man cult”. The cult like reverence for the person we idealize is the microcosm of unrequited love—cult leaders captivate our deepest desires and cultivate a community full of brainwashed people. In the case of attraction, we are brainwashed by the idea of romance, and it puts us in a trance. We so desperately crave to be held, to be seen, but fail to understand ourselves. We are so deeply invested in the idealization of our person that we don’t even realize the brainwashing. We often provide justifications for all of their actions—all just to maintain them as pure. This is exemplified by real life examples of infamous cult leaders who are often viewed as God-like by their respective congregations.
In the case of Jim Jones—whom Ocean loosely mentions in “Bad Religion”, this devoted faith in one man resulted in the deaths of hundreds. We don’t realize how vesting all of our energy and livelihood in one person can prove to be fatal. This is amplified by never receiving this back. We are puppets in the cult of romanticized relationships. We don’t fully grasp the implications of dropping everything for one thing. Jones was able to convince his congregation—whom originally intended to glorify a Christian God, to drop everything and move to a proclaimed heaven on earth. This is similar to the way we often allow our ambition for love be perverted into something more cynical. Although wanting love isn’t inherently evil—like wanting salvation isn’t. In the process of achieving our desire, we allow the glamorized version of the dream to blur the lines of what is reality. In the case of cults—many are often so disconnected from reality that the truth becomes strictly what comes from the mouth of the leader. This is akin to letting the words or desires of our unrequited lover to become the gospel. We want to change the things about us that they don’t find desirable. Sometimes even changing our behavior, or picking up a new hobby just for the approval from their crush. This further underscores the idea that how we kill our identity in the pursuit of a thing that isn’t even ours to begin with.
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Waves and the Human Experience
We chase the things we cannot obtain, and often pay the price. We get so caught up in one small wave that we forget about all the other high tides that wash away over our lives. No matter how rocky they may prove to be, finding beauty in the broken facilitates true contentment.
Chasing an enigma, an idealized version that fails to see one’s flaws, rejects the true random nature of life. For all of the chaos and crashes of oceans blue—they’re triumphantly standing: self realization and love.
We can choose to put batteries back into the remote and regain control of our lives. Instead of waiting for love that never comes, we can choose to find love where it already exists. Changing the channel from idealized versions of people we admire, to tapping into personal growth and love. We don’t have to adhere to a one man cult—we can reprogram our cognition to realize that we are enough. We don’t need to change.
This is a constant reminder that life and love comes in waves, and if we don’t take a moment to bask in its beauty—we could be washed to shore without ever realizing we lived. Our reason for living should not be an obsession with the unattainable, when there is so much love that surrounds.
