Photo via Flickr, by WhatDaveSees
Last year I took part in a live stage show and podcast called Ask Roulette. It was my second time appearing, and I got hit by host Jody Avirgan with an unexpectedly deep question
“In unrequited love, would you rather be the person who is in love with someone, and it’s unrequited, or would you rather know that someone is madly in love with you and just not be in love with them?”
I'm not going to do be Internet-annoying and bury the answer so deep in embedded media that you have to hunt for it. You can hear the audio starting around minute 22 in the player below or on this page. Ask Roulette just posted a supercut highlighting exchanges from several shows, and my response made the cut (or supercut). If you prefer ingesting words with your eyes, just keep reading. Here's a near-exact transcript of my response:
“To be on the receiving end of love that you don’t want is its own form of awkwardness at a minimum, and you have to make certain/different types of choices about how to behave and how open to be and how much you trust and how much you share. Whereas you being on the giving side of that love, whether it’s requited or not, you’re giving. And you’re not choosing whether to return. It’s still a difficult choice, but it’s not really a choice. You just feel compelled. So, I would choose compulsion over active denial in the area of love. ”
The full version of the original show where my answer first appeared is here.