Love is a tricky emotion since it takes a chord struck between two hearts at the same time for it to come to fruition. When that doesn’t happen, you are left with no choice but to continue loving from a distance. That can be an excruciatingly painful place to be in.
When you think about falling in love, the expectation is that it will bring you joy, togetherness, and a happily ever after. But life is not a rom-com and not all love stories pan out with rainbows and roses. There is an extreme other end of the love spectrum that entails the pain of knowing that you cannot be with the person you are in love with. When that happens, you have no choice but to learn how to love someone from afar.
Dealing with it can be one of the most difficult things you ever do, especially if you cannot bring yourself to move on from such a love. In such a situation, loving from afar is your only option. Hard as it may be, it is possible.
What Does It Mean To Love From A Distance?
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Loving someone from a distance is not the same as being in a long-distance relationship. It doesn’t mean that you are physically separated from your partner because work commitments or other obligations compel you to stay in different places. Loving from afar means being in love with someone you cannot be with.
This could be because they’re toxic for you or you both know that you’re not good for each other. So, you decide that despite all that love you feel for one another, getting into a relationship isn’t the best decision. In such cases, not being together can be the biggest favor two people do to each other because this togetherness can be destructive, even if it is the most passionate pull they’ve ever felt.
Bear in mind that loving from a distance is not a technique to win someone over or persuade them to love you back. It is about freeing yourself from the expectation that this love will materialize into something more. To learn how to love someone from a distance, you must remember that loving from a distance is:
- Not passive-aggressive technique: Be sure that you are not loving someone from a distance as a passive-aggressive technique to win them over or teach them a lesson
- Unfulfilled love: Telling someone, “I’m thinking of you across the miles”, or expressing your love from a distance can be very different from sharing love in a relationship
- Not an obligations: You can care for a person you are in love without feeling obligated to take care of them
- Intense heartache: Loving from a distance will bring you intense heartache. When that happens, it helps to remind yourself that no great love ever came without struggle
- Not a reason to neglect yourself: Don’t let your forlorn heart take a toll on your life. Prioritize taking care of your physical and mental health
When To Love From A Distance?
So, how do you decide that living with the “I love you from a distance” feeling is better than forging a romantic partnership? Here are some tell-tale indicators:
- Negative energy: Despite the love and passion, their presence brings negative energy to your life or vice versa. And your dynamics is marred with doubts, lack of trust, judgment, and hurt. In such situations, telling the other person “I will always love you from afar” is a wiser choice than being consumed by an unhealthy, toxic relationship
- Not being heard: If the person who you have lost your heart to becomes such an overbearing presence that you find yourself unable to communicate your true thoughts and desires, it is best to learn to love from a distance. Sometimes you have to love someone from afar, and this is one such situation
- Control: Are your thoughts, actions and words controlled by this person? Do you feel like they cast a hypnotic spell on you making you say or do things that you normally wouldn’t? It is a clear indication that you need to take a step back and consider loving from a distance
- Manipulation: Drama, flattery, stubbornness, gaslighting – if a person uses every trick in the book to manipulate you, being with them cannot bring you happiness. If you cannot get over them, learn how to love someone from afar
- Not being at peace: Love, at least the healthy kind, should be your source of joy, contentment and peace. And not your biggest torment. However, if despite deep feelings you cannot find peace, know that you can learn how to love someone from a distance too
At times, it is possible that your relationship with your loved one doesn’t have any of these negative qualities. Despite that you both decide that it is best to part ways and love from a distance. Take Amy and Jemma, for example. Amy came to the States for a doctoral fellowship. She started working soon after and stayed on. She met Jemma and they fell in love. Amy always had plans to stay in the country for longer. But luck had different things planned for her.
Amy now needs to shift back to her home country as her aging parents seem to need her more than ever before. Jemma is a divorced single mother and madly in love with Amy. But she can not cross seas with Amy as she can not make her 11-year-old daughter pack up her entire life.
Amy and Jemma are bound by their circumstances and do not want to be in a long-distance relationship that has no end in sight. To save each other and their dependents pain and agony, they have decided to make their peace with loving from a distance.
Related Reading: How To Cope If You Have A Crush On Someone Who Is In A Relationship
How Do You Show Someone You Love Them From A Distance?
So, you’ve weighed the pros and cons of acting on your feelings for that special someone and decided that it’s best to love them from a distance. The question now is how do you say I love you from a distance. How to show someone you love them from afar? And can you learn to love someone like that? After all, when your heart is brimming over with love for someone, it is hard to contain those emotions.
You cannot be together but cannot get over the love you feel for them as well. It is not possible to simply switch off your feelings, tuck them in a corner and get on with your life. To help you out of this dilemma, here are 8 ways to show someone that you can love them from a distance without getting romantically involved:
1. Tell them how you feel
Want to tell that special someone in your life that you’ve fallen head over heels in love with them? Well, just go ahead and do it. Say I love you from a distance. This means expressing your feelings for the person but also telling them in no uncertain terms that you cannot be together.
Irrespective of whether or not they feel the same way, it can be an extremely painful thing to do. But you have to put your feelings out there for the sake of your sanity. You may or may not move on from this love but this will give you the peace and closure you need to at least get on with your life.
Saying “I will always love you from afar” can be a huge burden off your chest. By doing so, you’re putting your feelings out in the open but also making it clear your lack of desire for a relationship. Telling them how you feel will help you love from a distance.
Related Reading: Some Of The Best One-Sided Love Movies In Bollywood
2. Be the friend they can fall back on
Can you love someone from a distance? You sure can. Another way of loving someone from a distance is to be the friend they can fall back on, their shoulder to lean on. By being there for your love through their thick and thin, you can forge a strong bond with them even without being in a relationship. They’d know that they can call you to vent at 2 AM or list you as their emergency contact. Even though you’re not together as a couple, this unique connection can be enough to keep you going.
However, be wary! Many know how to love someone in a relationship but are not as equipped to loving from a distance. Being there for someone does not mean being a pushover or putting themselves ahead of your own needs. It is also equally important that this equation is a two-way street, otherwise, you’d just be sacrificing yourself at the altar of a love that has no future.
3. Be in tune with their feelings
How can you learn to love someone without caring about their feelings? Being in tune with their feelings doesn’t just mean knowing how they feel about you. It means knowing their most intimate, deepest thoughts. You can love someone from a distance by understanding who they are, what makes them tick, what their fears and vulnerabilities are. Admiring someone from a distance and making them feel your love for them begins with being in tune with them and understanding them like the back of your hand.
This is why forging and nurturing a sincere friendship with them is one of the ways you can have that emotional connection where they feel ready to share their feelings with you. When a person realizes that you know them inside out and love them for who they are, they’re bound to understand the depth of your feelings for them.
4. Respect their wishes
When you’re so madly in love, there are bound to be moments where you yearn to be with that special someone. Even if you know that it is not the right thing for either of you. The true test of loving someone from afar is to not let your emotions get the better of you. Can you love someone from a distance or love them up close with no regard for what they need? No, you cannot.
How to show someone you love them from afar? Not meddling in their life or overstepping your boundaries in the throes of your feelings is definitely one way to go about it. Let’s say the one you love from a distance is already in a relationship, you can make the depth of your feelings felt by wishing them well and quietly removing yourself from the equation, sans any drama.
Whether you have mutually decided to not take things forward or it was their call, you must respect their wishes even in your weakest moments. There is no better way to show someone you love them, no matter how it is you are loving them – loving from a distance or in a relationship.
Related Reading: How Do I Move On From One-Sided Love? Our Expert Tells You…
5. Don’t let hurt give away to resentment
No matter how pragmatically you both decided to not be together, living with unresolved feelings is bound to hurt. A lot. To show your special someone that you love them with all your heart, you mustn’t let these feelings of hurt and pain give way to resentment.
Let’s say you wanted to be with them but they were not in a place to get into a serious relationship and things were left unfinished between you two. It is only natural that you’d grudge them for it on some level. However, you must not let these negative emotions build up to an extent that they make you resent the person you love so dearly.
The answer to how to love someone from afar lies in being in touch with your own feelings too and equipping yourself with tools to process them the right way so that you’re not gripped by negativity.
6. Maintain your distance
Often, being in love with someone and not being in a relationship with them can lead to an on-again-off-again tendency. This is because your feelings fuel your desire to be together but at the same time being together feels so unhealthy that you cannot sustain a relationship.
If left unchecked, this can prove to be a rather toxic pattern. When it comes to loving someone from a distance, the best thing you can do is to maintain that distance no matter what. Be it you who wants to initiate romance or them, take it upon yourself to ensure you both don’t go down that path again. That is how you learn to love from a distance.
Saving that person from hurt and toxicity can be an unusual yet impactful way of showing your love for them. In those forlorn moments when you’re longing to have them in your life, take refuge in a stiff drink and some loving someone from a distance songs. But remember, no drunk dialing or texting.
7. No guilt trips
Perhaps you wanted to date and build a long-term relationship with the person you’re in love with but they did not reciprocate. Or their words and actions scarred you so deeply that you decided against acting on your feelings. Whatever the case, don’t use the past actions to give them a guilt trip in the hope that they’ll do whatever it takes to win you over again.
Some love stories are not meant to have a happy ending. Some people come into your life as a beautiful chapter or an important life learning. Sometimes you have to love someone from afar. In your moments of agony, it’s crucial to keep reminding yourself of this fact.
Often, it’s the circumstances – and not the people – that are to blame. So, you can love someone from a distance without letting it turn toxic by simply letting go of guilt trips. At the same time, you should not let the other person get inside your head if they’re trying to make you feel guilty about putting your well-being ahead of your love.
Related Reading: 13 Warning Signs Of Being Obsessed With Someone
8. Show your love through forgiveness
If you are choosing to love someone from afar, there is bound to be a lot of emotional baggage between you two. What could be a better way of showing your love for this person than giving them the gift of your forgiveness?
Let them know that whatever transpired between you both is water under the bridge now. While you still harbor strong feelings for them, you have absolved them and yourself of the responsibility of all things that didn’t go the way you’d have wanted. This will also free you from being caught in the constant loop of “what if”, “if only”, “why not”.
Key Pointers
- Loving someone from a distance is not the same as being in a long-distance relationship
- You might need to love from a distance because they’re toxic for you or you both know that you are not good for each other or your circumstances are such that it is best to not be in a romantic relationship with them
- Loving from a distance is not a technique to win someone over or persuade them to love you back. It is about freeing yourself from the expectation that this love will materialize into something more
- You can be there friend, respect their wishes, maintain your distance and not send them down guilt trips to show them you love them from a distance
To learn to love from a distance is to truly love them. At the same time, loving someone from a distance doesn’t mean putting your life on hold for them. New loves can always take root in your heart even when you love someone you cannot be with. So, don’t shut the door on that possibility. Give yourself a chance to move on and slowly get over this unfulfilled, unrequited love.
FAQs
Yes, when you’re in love with someone you cannot be with, it is possible to continue loving them from a distance.
To love him from a distance you have to close the door on the possibility that things can ever work out between you two. By eliminating a romantic partnership as the end goal, you can love him from a distance.
To show someone you love them from a distance you can make them feel loved and cared for without imposing on them or making them feel obligated to reciprocate.
When you decide you cannot be with a person because they’re not good for you but still can’t help being in love with them, you know you love them from a distance.
Here are three quotes that beautifully sum up what loving from a distance feels like:
“In true love, the smallest distance is too great and the greatest distance can be bridged.” -Hans Nouwens
“That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.” -George Eliot
“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.” -Roger de Bussy-Rabutin
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