Last update: July 17, 2017
Who has not succumbed to the sweetness and bitterness of impossible loves? The quintessential example of this category is adolescent love. How it felt for an English teacher or teacher. A platonic love that was satisfied with a look or a smile, which let you dream big, but which did not allow you to achieve concrete goals. There was also some enjoyment in fantasizing about that love.
There are certainly also impossible loves towards a singer, an actress or any famous person. They are those affections that settle on someone we see, even if the person in question doesn't even know we exist. We perceive her as familiar, but in reality she is light years away. Even so, many teenagers and even some young people and adults have experienced this feeling.
"Love is like a war: easy to start, difficult to end, impossible to forget".
-Henry Louis Mencken-
Impossible loves properly so called cannot be missing. These are born and ignited, but are surrounded by bad luck or real obstacles. They are feelings that are experienced with intensity and that, in one way or another, never die.
The various types of impossible loves
Experts say there are three types of impossible loves. One is phantom love, the other is narcissistic love, and finally there is difficult love.
The first corresponds to those cases in which one falls in love with someone who does not exist. You need love and they are awarded to a person characteristics and virtues that, in reality, they do not have. Almost always this person represents a way to fill our childhood shortcomings.
There are also impossible loves of a narcissistic nature. They are impossible because they are never found. He believes he deserves someone so perfect that he can spend his entire life looking for him without finding him. It is to love emptiness or to desire an exalted version of one's ego. In these cases there is only great loneliness. Nobody succeeds in realizing this fantasy.
Finally, there are loves that are impossible due to difficulties. These are loves for which you have to fight a lot to make them materialize. There are specific situations that make certain loves very difficult. For example, the person in question already has a partner or it is someone who will not fall in love with us or, again, there are strong religious or ideological conflicts that prevent us from being together.
The cases of great loves that become impossible due to the death of one of the two also belong to this last group. The person dies, but the love that unites us to him does not die. For some time, one remains trapped in the contradiction of loving someone who is no longer there.
The enchantment of impossible loves
It is impossible loves that lead us to discover the poet in us. The most pragmatic have never tried it, but they missed out on a hellish and wonderful experience at the same time. All loves need a touch of impossibility to feed themselves, to keep desire alive. When this impossibility is absolute, the soul burns, and with it the creativity and the feeling of living and dying in a single instant.
The impossibility in love is experienced, more or less, as a vital tragedy. At least that's what it feels like as you struggle to make them real. They are loves full of torment and that lead us to live in the paradox of not being able to abandon them, but not even being able to reach them. They are suffered and appreciated at the same time. They are both ecstasy and abyss.
Despite everything, they have a unique charm. They test us, challenge our most intimate dimension. And one thing is certain: they are never forgotten. They are never remembered with indifference. They pale with time, they are filled with reality, but they do not stop being a spark that occasionally accelerates the beating of our heart.
In some cases, however, impossible loves turn into ballast. It happens when we can't let go of the fantasy and blindly cling to it. When we fail to give way to the frustration that comes from accepting that not the story we wanted was not possible. In these cases, you feel terrible pain and you can even get sick. However, to learn to truly love, impossible loves undoubtedly constitute an excellent school.
