What happens with unrequited love that persists over time?

What does one do about unrequited love? What does one do about unrequited love that seems to live on and on like a wound that never heals? How is it that a man can go on loving one woman year after year believing, in spite of the pain, that and day she will find a place for him in her heart? Am I a fool to believe? I think that I am a fool, and yet I continue to believe. Am I creating this situation? Or is this situation creating me?

I said 'You can marry, but once you have married she will not be a widow. Then what will you do? Then the whole charm will disappear because the charm is in her being a widow.' He laughed -- he thought I was joking. And he got married. And after six months he said 'You were right. I'm no more interested in her. My interest was basically in her widowhood. I wanted to show to the public that I am a great servant of people, that I am serving people even through my love. I am sacrificing my love for a widow. I am going against the society, I am going against the tradition. I am doing something great. But now the marriage has happened and the widow has come, now there is no point.' I said 'You do one thing. You commit suicide. She will be a widow again,…

Osho, what if love is not accepted? I’ve never heard anyone say, “Love God—and it isn’t accepted.” So this must be about some other kind of love. You must have loved a woman and it wasn’t accepted. You are blessed. The real difficulty begins when it is accepted. Then you would be saying, “Osho, what if love is accepted?” Then you are in real trouble.

And I am not saying that if you have a wife or husband you should run away. Just understand this: the time has come to lift your eyes upward. You lift your eyes—and let your wife lift hers too. You have both loved each other and tormented each other enough. Now lift your eyes upward. Now both of you love That. And you will be amazed: if both of you become prayerful, if both of you fall in love with God, then between you a stream of love will begin to flow that never flowed before. It is an ancillary flowering of being connected to the Divine. On the wealth whose strength fueled your siege of love, today the bloom of that wealth has grown old. With the garment by which you veiled your edifice’s sores, the hand of mishap turned the garment inside out. In the palaces where you…

Osho, you tell us to love. I too loved; I was defeated, and the wounds have still not healed. Society did not like that love, and my beloved was weak; she bowed before society. I cannot even forgive her. And yet you still tell us to love?

I do not tell you to do love—I tell you to be love. Doing is a small, petty thing. There, only defeat and wounds will come to your hand. And it is good that society put an obstacle in your way; otherwise, as in the story I just told you, by now you would be celebrating your silver jubilee. Society showed you great kindness. Thank society. Take it as grace. And you cannot forgive that woman! What kind of love is this that cannot forgive! What kind of love is this that is full of revenge! And these wounds are not precious wounds. They do not go very deep. They are on the surface—like scratched skin. They are no deeper than the skin. All these heal. Time heals them. Do not sit clutching them. Friend, do not be disheartened! Affairs have often kept forming and breaking. Why those starry tears…

It is always so. You love a woman and you understand only when she dies, when you have lost her; and then you cry and weep. It is not because of death that you are crying and weeping; you are crying and weeping because now you see the point, and now there is no point in seeing it -- she is no more. You never loved her though you always talked about love and always quarrelled, never loved. Now she is gone and great love arises, but she is no more there to respond to it. It only happens when people lose something or gain, but the things have to be very abrupt so the mind cannot immediately function in the old pattern. If things change slowly, then there is no problem; the mind will cope.

Osho, I have already suffered a lot because of love, and you say—the upward flowering of love is devotion. Master, I don’t want to get into that muck again.

No one in this world belongs to anyone, nor has anyone been born to be anyone’s property; nor should anyone be. It is an insult. No one is anyone’s slave. Love is a flow between two free individuals. Whenever either becomes a slave—if one or both become slaves—the flow stops. And when the flow stops, great pain arises: thorns pierce, wounds appear in life. People suffer “from love,” not because of love, but because in love’s name something else is going on—ego. That is what it is. You will be surprised to know: jealousy arises with persons—and it even arises in situations where there is no reason for jealousy at all. The husband comes home; the wife has waited all day. He sits down to read the newspaper. The wife may snatch it away, tear it up—one can even be jealous of a newspaper: “What is this paper that comes…