THE ALLURE of unspoken love: what nietzsche can teach us about unrequited love bella bromberg, ed. Yael Bright, annie lind
erhaps due to an early predilection for CW teen soaps, ceaseless overconsumption of Norah Jones albums, or an overarching melancholic (bordering on masochistic) nature, I have found myself embroiled in a series of love triangles over the years. I have also endured the unpleasant experience of being edged out as the two other points of the troika inevitably fall for each other.
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In each of these instances, attempting to lift myself out of despondence, I have sought wisdom from musicians, artists, thinkers, lovers—anyone who addresses my sentiments, even fleetingly. The vast majority seem to have been perennially depressed; perhaps I’m comforted by this commonality. The only time I’ve felt solaced during amorous triangulations— and the long periods of yearning they inspire—is when absorbed within the warm embrace of a friend also lost in a limerent state. Commiseration sessions are no antidote, though they can serve as impressive temporary stitching. But stitches cannot heal a gash if the infection has already spread throughout the bloodstream. In Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche frames unrequited
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GADFLY
Skeletal
love as a result of the natural human pull toward disquietude: “Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference.” The lover, then, is little more than a corporeal manifestation of restlessness itself. The years have dissolved at an unsettling clip, yet my furtive affections have persisted, sustained by dizzying fantasies, vivid daydreams, and a few nuggets of reality. All the while, I’ve been able to romanticize the sweet sadness of love unspoken with great facility. However, when I arrived at the office today, face glistening with earlymorning tears, an unusually lucid thought hit me like an anvil: no one knows how I feel unless I tell them. It has become clear to me with time that the desire to be known is the most fundamental of all. More than attention, more than success, more than power, and maybe even more than love, the most basic treasure we seek is to see our true selves reflected in the eyes of another. Due to its overuse and inextricability from the pedantic therapizing of modern times, I have an acute
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