Curated by Abodid Sahoo
Research papersI keep coming back to.
Written by their respective authors, not by me. Collected here for their connections to autoethnography, photography, grief, memory and human emotions.
The reading shelf
Unrequited Love
A dissertation that presents an existential-phenomenological investigation into the experience of unrequited "love-at-first-sight." The study was submitted to the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2013.
Snippet is too brief to provide a two-line summary, containing only reproduction permission notices.
A piece on "Obsessive Love" from The Poetry Pharmacy, stating that although love can cause anguish, "’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all." It argues that relationships are how humans evolve and that the regret of chances untaken is worse than the agony of heartbreak.
Examined the roles of romantic beliefs and imagined interactions in unrequited love among Chinese college students. Found that more idealized romantic beliefs and having imagined interactions were associated with stronger unrequited love, with the frequency of imagined interactions mediating the relationship.
Responds to a proposal for using "love drugs" to enhance romantic relationships, arguing that the medicalization of broken hearts is therapy, not enhancement. Notes that psychotherapy and counseling already analyze and medicalize romantic love without objection.
Explores unreciprocated romantic attraction by comparing narrative accounts, concluding that unrequited love is a bilaterally distressing experience marked by mutual incomprehension. Would-be lovers reported more positive and intensely negative emotions than rejectors and felt they were led on.
This study tested a moderated mediation model that commitment prior to an unrequited love episode will be related to higher levels of friendship maintenance behaviors after the episode. This relationship is mediated by the individual's motivations to remain friends with the rejecter.
Compares rejecter (target) and pursuer (actor) perspectives of unrequited attraction, finding targets reported being on the receiving end of more unwanted courtship tactics. Actors tended to overreport reciprocity signals and underreport rejections, a difference with implications for understanding stalking.