When You’ve Fallen In Love With the Wrong Person

EXPERIENCE in this field, like so many I talk to, is in abundant supply, with painful reminiscences to be recounted – at least twice. Twice I’ve fallen in love and become infatuated with the wrong person; both times I was fortunate that both they and I were free, but there was still the pain of unrequited love, which is never a good feeling.

When you’ve fallen in love with the wrong person – and sometimes either of you or both of you are not free, i.e. you’re in a current relationship with another person – there is a problem that needs to be met, not with denial, but with a plan of action that will restore life and options. Otherwise people are going to get hurt. And it is never excusable to hurt others because we, ourselves, might be ‘in love’.

But by far and away the most common issue is a single person falling for a single person, but the feelings are only felt one way. The other person is certainly happy with a platonic relationship, which only serves to exasperate the person who feels lost in their attraction.

So what can be done when we’ve fallen in love with the wrong person?

It’s best that we don’t continue to hold out unrealistic hope, yet we’ll certainly be experiencing some form of loss and the emergence of grief. Expectations are key. Why would a logical person continue to sow in hope? It’s because – at least in this area of our lives – we are feeling, even acting, anything other than logical. We’ve been swept off our feet.

Action is needed, however, and not in the direction of our desire; against it.

We have to face the painful, inevitable truth. It’s the only way we can hope to return to our senses and restore our emotional and spiritual equilibrium. With a commitment to action we use the available passion we have to take control of the situation – again, against our desires, which will be difficult – and we go against the flow of where we want to go.

It’s amazing how much and what we’ll compromise just to be in the same room as the one we’re infatuated with. Even the prospect that a certain person could ‘be there’ is enough to move heaven and earth. It really makes little sense.

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When we find ourselves having fallen for the wrong person we need to take action. The longer we deny what we truly know – it will never come off – the worse life will get. Take action today, not tomorrow.

When we’ve fallen for someone and it won’t work out we can sympathize with ourselves – many people experience the same thing. But we do need to take some action to restore control over our emotional world.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.