Unrequited love is painful. As this new video from The School of Life proclaims, having your crush return a smile, agree to a date, or you know, something more serious like marriage, would make us eternally happy. Often, this can seem to be within reach, perhaps due to daydreaming, but sadly, the feelings are never returned.

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Usually when we get bummed out, well-meaning friends and family advise us to get over it, and encourage us to instead focus on something or someone else. But this advice, while benign, is actually misguided, according to the video. Instead, The School of Life believes the real way to cure unrequited love is to think about the object of your affection in a new way: constructively and more analytically about who they actually are, and not who we think they are or want them to be.

It’s only when you delve deeper into a person that you get to know just how challenging and complex they really are, as all of us humans can be difficult at times. After all, everyone has their negative personality traits, whether it’s being too short tempered, crass, deceptive or vain. But the reason you can’t see whether your loved one is unemotional or controlling is because you don’t really have the knowledge of who they are.

People try to be the best versions of themselves, especially to those who aren’t close friends or family. What we see from afar are the most charming parts of someone’s personality - their attractiveness, wealth, intelligence, or sense of humor, all of which are important too. Instead, we think that they’ve been blessed and are on a higher level. They haven’t, asserts The School of Life. You just haven’t gotten to know the real them. That unrequited lover is attractive because she spent two hours getting ready. That cute barista is smart because he has a PhD and invested a lot of time and money into education. And this, explains the narrator, is why unrequited love can seem so strong and cruel.

Because you haven’t spent enough time with the one you admire, there’s little chance you’ll get sick of him or her, which only adds to the intensity of your feelings. The real cure to unrequited love is actually in getting to know the one you think you love. With time, you’ll discover their annoying habits, like leaving the toilet seat up. You’ll see how flawed they really are, and how in reality, they are just like everyone else.

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The pain of unrequited love isn’t that your affections aren’t returned, but that you’re full of hope that this person won’t disappoint you through his or her perfection. So the next time you feel the pangs of not having your love reciprocated, remember one thing: your crush is just as irritating as everyone else.

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