Unrequited

Can "love" truly be real if it is unrequited? In the sense that the person you love, does not love you back? Do we feel love because someone loves us? Give love because we get love? Someone is always going to say it first. That first person has worked it out in their own mind. But the other person, do they just say it back because it's the right thing to do? Because it would hurt too much not saying it back.

Theoretically, the one you love, is the most important person in your life. For some it is the person who completes them, fixed them or makes them a better person. But to allow someone the entire access to your heart, your mind, your soul or whatever you want to call it, is wholly an act of trust. No one can relay their deepest desires and secrets without trusting that the other person will not judge or mock or betray them.

Someone told me that love is giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting them not to. So if you have both given eachother the power, is love just an agreement of mutually assured destruction? In love, you give part of yourself to the other person, and in doing so are you also protecting yourself? If the one you love hurts you, they are also going to hurt themselves. 

Can you give someone that power without recieving the same power back? If you get in so deep as to call it "love", is it real? Can you love someone who has never loved you and never will? Unrequited "love" is potentially the most painful and detrimental thing a person could experience psychologically. But how can we be sure? Is it worth the pain to take a chance? To maybe learn some things and better ourselves?

Our relationships and "love", "lust", "trust", "desire", "heart", whatever you chose to call it or prove by, will always teach us something. Human beings have the endless capacity to grow, and every individual we meet is a potential for growth.