145: Hoping They’ll Change? The Truth About One-Sided Love

You’re texting first. Waiting for replies. Making excuses. Holding on, hoping they’ll come around. But deep down, something feels off.

This isn’t just patience… it’s one-sided love.

In this episode, we unpack the emotional and psychological toll of loving someone who doesn’t meet you halfway. From fantasy bonds and false hope to reclaiming your power and choosing yourself again, this is your compassionate wake-up call, and your invitation to let go with grace.

Key Takeaways

• One-sided love often begins as hope… and ends in emotional burnout.

• Fantasy and denial aren’t love, they’re survival strategies.

• False hope disguises itself as devotion, but it drains your energy and delays your healing.

• Letting go doesn’t mean your love was wasted; it means it’s time to give that love somewhere it can grow.

• Inner stability comes when your peace no longer depends on someone else’s attention.

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a one-sided love story?

What helped you let go, or what’s holding you back? Come share your story with us on Instagram @mylifecoachluke or in the Facebook group.

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript: Hey, welcome back. You're listening to episode number 145. This is the After The Affair podcast. I'm your host, Luke Shillings. You know that feeling when your heart is all. In, but theirs just doesn't seem to be, you are invested, but it's not obvious that they are. You're thinking about them before bed. You are checking your phone first thing in the morning.

You're playing that last conversation for some hidden meaning. Meanwhile, they're replying eventually with half interest, with vague promises, with just enough presence to keep. The hope alive, but not quite enough to build anything real. This is one-sided love and the hardest part is it. It doesn't always look like rejection.

It often looks like mixed signals. They're polite, they're kind. Sometimes they're even warm, but emotionally, more of a ghost. You keep waiting for things to deepen, for the energy to balance out. You tell yourself it's early or they've been through a lot. They just need time. Yet that might be the trap, because one-sided love doesn't always start with heartbreak.

It starts with potential. It starts with you doing the emotional heavy lifting, carrying the connection on your own, while hoping they'll maybe eventually meet you halfway. And if that's where you are right now, if you feel like you are pouring out your heart and barely getting a trickle back, this episode's for you because we need to talk about the emotional toll of loving someone who isn't loving you back.

Whether this is. Before, during, or after infidelity, we need to talk about what it does to your confidence, your peace, your sense of self. But most importantly, we need to talk about how you begin to heal from it, how you get honest with yourself. Not to shame the love you gave, but to start giving it to someone who'll treat you like it matters.

And yes, sometimes that person is you. So let's talk about what really keeps one-sided love alive. I think it's emotional fantasy. It's not just about the person in front of you, it's about the story. Your mind is writing about who they could become. You imagine how they'd look at you if they really saw you.

You picture them turning around and realizing they've been in love with you all along. You build entire conversations in your head full of vulnerability and redemption, and finally being chosen. And listen, this doesn't mean you're foolish, it just means you're human. You like me, want connection. You want closeness, you want to be seen.

And when the present moment doesn't offer that your imagination steps in, it gives you a version of them who is emotionally available. Attentive, affectionate. It creates a fantasy that feels so vivid, so possible that it becomes hard to tell what's real. But the truth is, no matter how beautiful that version is, you're not in love with them.

You are in love with the version of them that exists in your mind. Remember a relationship is one person's thoughts about the other person. 'cause without those thoughts, the relationship itself does not exist. And that's painful because every moment spent waiting for that version to show up is a moment that you are unavailable to reality.

You unavailable to yourself, unavailable to the people who might actually meet you where you are. This fantasy is comforting in the short term. It soothes the sting of uncertainty, but it also keeps you stuck, stuck, hoping, chasing, trying to make excuses for their inconsistency because the story in your head feels safer than the truth on the ground.

You rewrite red flags into mixed signals. You interpret emotional distance as shyness or past trauma, or they're just not ready yet. But a question you could perhaps ask yourself gently and honestly, are you loving this person? Or are you loving the potential you see in them? Because potential is not a promise, it's not a relationship, and it's not enough to build a future on.

Hope is a beautiful thing. It can keep us going when everything feels uncertain, but here's the quiet truth that very few really want to admit. Sometimes hope becomes a habit, not because things are actually getting better, but because hope feels better than facing what's real. In one sided love hope can start to feel like progress.

You hold onto small signs, a longer text message, a last minute plan, a compliment that feels personal, almost meaningful. And in those moments, something likes upping you. You think maybe they're finally seeing me, maybe we're turning a corner, but then it fades again. Back to emotional distance, back to being the one who always initiates back to questioning if you imagined it all, and.

The part that really hurts here is you're not actually being loved. You're being stretched between your own desire and their absence. Because hope, when it's not grounded in reality, becomes essentially self abandonment. You stop asking, is this good for me? And instead you ask, what more can I give to make them choose me?

But real love doesn't make you perform. It doesn't make you wait in the wings until they decide if you're worth showing up. For real love meets you in the middle. It doesn't leave you carrying the whole relationship on your back hoping that they'll notice. So if hope has become your habit, this is an invitation to pause.

Not to stop caring, not to shut down your heart, but just to bring it home, bring it back to you. 'cause you deserve to hope for something true. And hoping for bare minimum connection isn't the same as being loved. You don't have to let it all go at once. But it starts with asking, is this hope keeping me warm or is it just keeping me stuck?

So how do you really know when your hope has slipped into something else? When it's not lifting you, but instead quietly wearing you down? Maybe you start checking your phone constantly, even though deep down, you know, they rarely message first. You wait, you refresh. You reread old conversations, trying to feel close again, even if it's just a version of them that once seemed engaged.

You replay moments like a detective that one night they opened up that half smile they gave you the way they brushed past you, just a little longer than usual, and you search for clues, fragments of reassurance that maybe you are not imagining the connection. You explain their silence away. They're just tired.

They're just busy. They've got a lot of work at the minute. The kids are stressful. And maybe they're just not that great at expressing things. You tell yourself that you are being understanding when really you're just excusing patterns that hurt you. Here's the difference. Optimism empowers. Denial exhausts optimism is grounded in shared investment, in mutual effort, communication, accountability.

It's when you both want to build something, even if it's hard. But denial. Denial says, if I just hang on, they'll change. If I'm patient enough, they'll realize if I do more, give more, prove more. Maybe they'll show up. It's quiet but relentless. And it drains you because denial dresses up as hope. It wears the same clothes.

It says similar things, but can you tell the difference by how it feels in your body? Optimism feels light forward facing, open-hearted denial, feels heavy, tight, like waiting for a train that was never scheduled to stop for you. So here's a question I want you to ask. Is this hope nourishing me or is it asking me to abandon myself in order to keep it alive?

Because real love doesn't require that real love doesn't ask you to shrink, to stretch or to settle, and you don't have to keep carrying the weight of what might be when what is is already telling you the truth. Look, letting go is hard, not because you're weak, not because you're naive, but because your love was real.

Your heart showed up fully, and even when things weren't mutual, you hoped they might become. So the thing is, loving someone shouldn't require this self abandonment. It shouldn't cost you your peace, your joy, or your sense of self. So how do you let go? Not with resentment, but with strength? Well, you can accept what isn't yours to control.

Remember, you can't force someone to love you back. You can't make them see your worth or show up consistently or choose you, but you can choose to stop waiting to stop hoping they'll become someone they're not trying to be. Maybe you could choose closure over clarity. And let's just get clear here.

Clarity is something that's hugely important in the process. So I'm not, we're not dismissing the idea of clarity. We're just saying that we become clear based on the things that we can control. You might never get the full why. Why they drifted, why they stayed silent, why they never chose you fully. And yes, that can be very painful, but closure doesn't have to come from them.

It can come from you saying. This story no longer serves me, and I'm ready to turn the page. You can grieve the hope, not just the person. You're not only saying goodbye to them, you're grieving the version of the future that you imagined. The late night texts, the shared moments, the what ifs, and that loss, it's real.

So honor it. Let yourself feel the sadness, but also recognize the future that you had was based on a version of them that only lived in your mind. And finally, you can leave with love. Not necessarily for them, but for you, because bitterness weighs you down. It keeps you tethered to a story that's already ended.

When you leave with love, you're not excusing their behavior. You're simply saying, I deserve peace more than I need revenge. Letting go doesn't mean your love was foolish. It doesn't mean it was wasted. It means it mattered, and now it's time to give that love somewhere it can grow, including back to yourself.

One-sided love throws you off balance. You start waking up with hope, hoping that they'll reach out first. You check your phone more than you'd like to admit. Every message, every silence becomes a measure of your worth. It feels like your peace is hanging on their next decision, but slowly you start to disappear from your own life.

You don't need their validation to feel worthy. You don't need their affection to feel lovable. What you do need is your own self loyalty, and that doesn't start with grand gestures. It starts with small, consistent acts of self-reflection that can help you come home to yourself. Questions like, what am I really craving from this relationship?

Not just surface level closeness, but what feeling. Safety, belonging, reassurance. Am I treating myself with the kindness I want from them? Or am I neglecting myself the way they've been neglecting me? Am I showing up for me or am I just waiting for them to finally do it? Because waiting is not the same as loving.

These questions don't always bring easy answers, but they shift your center of gravity. They anchor you back into your emotional body where clarity can begin to grow. 'cause inner stability doesn't mean you stop caring. It doesn't mean you turn cold or closed off. It means you stop handing your emotional weather forecast to somebody else.

It means that when someone pulls away, you don't chase. When they go quiet, you don't collapse. When they withhold love, you don't withhold it from yourself. It means you can sit in the discomfort and say, I loved with an open heart. I gave what was true. I held on in hope, but I don't need to prove I'm worthy anymore because I already am.

I always was, and now I'm choosing me. So if you are listening to this in the middle of the, the ache, the what ifs, the longing, the quiet disappointment, whether this is the beginning of a new relationship or you've been together with somebody for years, maybe even decades, but have never quite felt that connection, always believed that should have been something more than let this be your permission to call it one-sided to stop chasing crumbs.

And to let go of the version of the story that never made space for your full heart. One-sided love hurts, but it doesn't have to define you. You deserve to be loved back fully, clearly without guessing. And if you're not there yet, that's okay. Just start with this. I'm willing to choose truth over fantasy, clarity over confusion and myself over somebody who won't.

You have got this and you're not alone. If you want to get more insight. More information, more connection. Then there are two places that you can go if you haven't already. One is to come and join me over at Instagram. You can visit my page at my life, coach Luke, or you can join the After The Affair community on Facebook.

That's facebook.com/groups/after the affair. Community. I'll pop the links in the bio. As always, it'd be great to see you there. There's other people who have experienced things very similar to you. You are not alone, and this space is there just for you. Now, forgive me for my complete change of voice towards the end of this.

I made the rookie era once again of not recording the outro at the same time as the rest of the episode. Maybe one day I'll learn. Anyway. It's been an absolute pleasure as always to be here and to be talking to you, and thank you so much for carrying me around with you, whatever it is you are doing, whether you are out walking the dog, whether you're at the gym, whether you're driving to work, you know, I, I really do appreciate you spending this time with me and, and I promise that if you continue to consume.

What I share on the podcast and you find the things that are most relevant to you and you actually implement some of those things, you will start to see changes in your life. I guarantee it. And if you want any more help taking it to the next level, I'm here too. You can join the community. You can meet me on Instagram, whatever it takes, like just, just take some action and if you need me in your corner, I'm there for you.

And if not, that's also fine. What's important is that you are making intentional progress today. Okay? All done. I'll talk to you next week. Cheers.