The INFP and UNrequited Love

The phenomenon of unrequited love in the lives of infps, an MBTI introverted personality type (you know who you are) -- is so common maybe that's why it's gone without remarking. It remains part of the heartache and secret anguish of many infps.

I suggest reading or rereading Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid". It is utterly different in feeling tone tha
Walt Disney's version so please don't confuse the two. You can find it here.

This is a quintessential infp story of unrequited love. It shows both the depth and sacrificial devotion of many infps. The little mermaid wishes her beloved knew how hard it was for her to try and "walk" to reach him -- it was like shards of glass -- she did it because she loved him and he never had a clue. What infp doesn't relate to this?

"Every step she took was as the witch had said it would be, she felt as if treading upon the points of needles or sharp knives; but she bore it willingly, and stepped as lightly by the prince's side as a soap-bubble, so that he and all who saw her wondered at her graceful-swaying movements."

This is the agony many infps endure when they try to change to conform to how other women are.

When I think of this story, I'm reminded of the saying, "Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel."

Any infp will identify immediately with this story and also with its author who is certain to have been an infp. Hans Christian Anderson may have remained a virgin and had a lifelong unrequited passion.

Please be healed by these words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"It has seemed to me lately more possible tha
I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean.

"It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the ete
al, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both."nn nn