You love him/her dearly, deeply, so much so that you would lay down your life for… Trouble is, he/she doesn’t want it. And doesn’t care. I doubt anything else can be as painful or as heart-wrenching as that.Most people fall in love at random. Ever wondered what are the odds that the person we love feels the same for us? Very less…This means that a majority of people have, at some time or the other, experienced one-sided love. You know how it feels… loving someone and not being loved back breaks a person like nothing else can. It hurts your self-esteem, your ego. It makes you feel worthless, as if it wouldn’t matter to anyone if you ceased to exist. “I don’t want to live if he/she doesn’t care. Why should I live when I can’t have him/her?” That is the question one might ask oneself in a situation like this.It is the worst feeling in the world, this degradation of your self because somebody else doesn’t care. Does your worth depend on who likes you? Each person has some qualities. When someone fails to recognize all that is good in you, it doesn’t mean that you are bad. It means that the person in question has a rather biased and unfair way of measuring people up. The shortcoming lies in them, and not in you.As easy as that may be to say, it is extremely hard to believe and even harder to incorporate into your life.Unreciprocated love has its uses sometimes, no matter how unlikely that may seem. It makes one see their own shortcomings and makes them want to be a better person. Realizing where you lack is half the problem solved. Nobody is perfect. Maybe you don’t have a particular quality the person you love is looking for. Try to improve upon your faults.For those who think they are perfect, those who consider themselves God’s gift to the opposite sex, an instance of unreciprocated love may act as an eye-opener. It will hopefully make them realize that something is amiss in them or that there was something undesirable in them. It will break their streak of meaningless pride and make them a little less arrogant.The problem with unreciprocated love is that it hurts like hell and it takes a lot of time to get over it. In fact, getting back your lost sense of being worth something is one of the toughest things possible. It brings down your confidence and in really bad cases, people stop believing in themselves, in love and even in humanity.For people on the giving end, thing are seldom easier, unless they are absolutely heartless, that is. Saying “no” to someone is quite a job when you know that it is bound to hurt the other person. So when you get your heart broken, take a minute to think “why?” instead of “why me?” It just might make you a better person..........