The Psychology of Unspoken Love (V1)

Love, while elevating humans and their societies, can also lead them toward humiliation and decay; while granting transcendence and expanding the existential dimensions of humans and their societies, it can play a role in the destruction and annihilation of individuals’ and societies’ human emotions; and while deepening human existence and revealing new human horizons before individuals and their societies, it can obliterate their altruistic and humane sentiments, afflicting humans and their societies with regression, chaos, confusion, and the destabilization of their cultural, doctrinal, and especially moral values.
Despite the existing sensitivities surrounding love, it must be acknowledged that research on love is exceedingly difficult and challenging due to the numerous factors influencing its ups and downs. Nevertheless, there are many necessities that make the entry of researchers and scholars into the realm of love imperative. The author’s field studies indicate that sometimes youths have been entangled in their “unspoken love” for a decade or more without ever taking steps to reveal it; or there are other youths who, after more than a decade of their “imaginary love,” have lost their normal life routine and find it arduous, difficult, and impossible to return from the world of imagination to the real world.
Similarly, the author has encountered clinical cases in which misunderstandings about love led to severe psychological crises. For example, one client, after placing complete trust in her boyfriend and becoming pregnant, felt overwhelmed by shame and perceived that she had no option other than suicide. In another case, a client experienced such intense hardship and emotional turmoil within a romantic relationship that she attempted to hire someone to kill her boyfriend!
In this vein, one can also mention the emergence of other disorders such as: depression, self-harm, involvement in substance abuse, psychological breakdown and collapse, acid attacks, suicide, and homicide among passionate lover and beloveds. However, a more critical issue observed in the contemporary era regarding the matter of love is that love, beyond creating an arena for individual breakdown (or elevation), has proven effective in deviating human societies. Some individuals and advertising and media institutions, by taking love as a pretext, have swapped the path of societal transcendence with the path of their downfall and decay.
It goes without saying that throughout historical discourse on love, pure and chaste non-sensual love has always been posited alongside sensual love. But in recent decades, contrary to the theorizations of later scholars who generally considered love to have degrees and included sublime and base love in their classifications, in new theorizations, some theorists-emphasizing phenomena such as the spread and prevalence of capitalist world criteria even in human matters like love, the expansion and overshadowing of virtual space, women’s entry into the economic sphere and the spread of feminism (especially radical and extremist feminism) -have spoken of the fluidity of love (and of course, in practice, popular programs like Love Island, Eternal Love, Blind Date, and the like depict and promote the fluidity of love in action). Naturally, love accompanied by an ocean of energy and emotion, if considered fluid, becomes ineffective and even exploited by the capitalist system. This means that fluid love, which is predominantly body-based, is inherently coupled with consumerism, extensive use of cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, and in short, the body industry. Such a human is the ideal human of the capitalist system, as without claiming revolutionary zeal, through their mass consumption, they provide additional profits for the capitalist world. Meanwhile, the author, by gathering field evidence drawn from the literature of the 8-year Iran-Iraq War, which describes the love of many war commanders and their spouses, has in practice demonstrated a transcendent, enduring, and dynamic love among them.
In other words, while accepting the tendency of emotional love toward fluidity, one must also mention the endurance of love in value-based and value-oriented loves. Naturally, by viewing love as enduring, this wondrous phenomenon possesses the capacity to lead to the transcendence of the individual, their society, and their global community.
Thus, enlightenment regarding the fluidity or non-fluidity of love is a matter of great importance. For if the fluidity of love is accepted, one must pass over this fluid and unstable phenomenon indifferently; whereas, without accepting its fluidity, one can benefit from this concentrated source of energy, depending on the direction intended by individuals, institutions, or governments. For example, in Iranian cultural history, in the anecdote and narrative of the story of “Shirin and Farhad,” Farhad’s love for Shirin evolves into love for the community. Even though Shirin retracts her condition of carving a canal in the mountain -which would facilitate shepherds’ transfer of milk from the mountaintop to the base -Farhad continues his work. Similarly, in the story of “Khosrow and Shirin,” Shirin gradually draws the lovesick Khosrow toward value transcendence. In other words, if the endurance of love is accepted, one can benefit from this immense concentrated source of emotion and energy toward the transcendence of the individual, their society, and their global community. Otherwise, due to love’s fluidity and daily color-changing, not only can little benefit be derived from it, but this matter may become a pretext for corrupt institutions and systems to exploit it for their own interests and ambitions. For instance, the capitalist system, by promoting the fluidity of love in confrontation with the dualities that existed in love up to recent times in the world—where love was depicted in a sublime aspect and a baser one—has eliminated its sublime, transcendent, and self-sacrificial aspect under the title of love’s fluidity, portraying only the material, tangible, and sensual aspect of love before humans. The natural consequence of this is humans drowning in ever more consumption, or their tendency toward ever greater use of cosmetics, entrusting themselves to cosmetic surgeries, and the like, which brings about a sensual, consumerist, non-revolutionary lifestyle that is the ideal lifestyle of the capitalist system.
The collection “We Are from Above and We Go Higher”, considering the necessity of serving passionate lovers and attending to the new transformations directing human societies toward fluid love, has set out to gather field data on various types of human loves and, to the best of its ability, provide greater enlightenment on the matter of love. Through necessary enlightenments, while preventing humans’ human downfall or their fall into the lap of fluid love, it also illuminates the path to the elevation of their societies. This collection includes over 10 volumes of books (covering titles such as bestial, sensual, or animal love; passionate love, imaginary love, unspoken love, masculine and feminine love, online love—formation of love in virtual space—childish love, and belief-based love), addressing various arenas of human love.
“Unspoken Love” is the first title from the intended titles of the aforementioned collection, presented in three volumes.
In examining unspoken love, one can witness a wide spectrum of passionate lovers: individuals whose unspoken love has led to breakdown, and other passionate lovers at the opposite end of the spectrum who have in practice experienced elevation and transcendence, achieving a more transcendent human processing of themselves. In other words, in the field studies conducted on unspoken love, one specifically encounters two major classifications. The first category (comprising the majority of those involved in unspoken love) possesses an unspoken love where the component of excitement is highly prominent. However, in the second category of unspoken love, some individuals’ love is more focused on cognitive and value dimensions than emotional ones; passionate lovers are attracted to the beloved solely through their cognitive and value dimensions and have nurtured their love in their hearts.
Naturally, the orientations of both emotion-based unspoken love and cognition-based unspoken love will exhibit relatively different signs at the beginning, middle, and especially the end of unspoken love.
In this collection, after the book’s introduction, the initial signs, mid-path signs, and final signs of unspoken love—based on field evidence from the study—are discussed, and the book concludes with a brief summary.
In the present work, titled “Reflection on Unspoken Love,” there are four subtitles: “Theoretical and Research Literature on Unspoken Love,” “Reasons for Keeping Unspoken Love Unspoken,” “How Unspoken Love Forms,” and “Reflection on Field Study of Unspoken Love.”
The first subtitle focuses on “Theoretical Literature on Unspoken Love,” emphasizing that contrary to the theorizations of later scholars who generally considered love to have degrees and included sublime and base love in their classifications, in new theorizations, some theorists—emphasizing phenomena such as the spread and prevalence of capitalist world criteria even in human matters like love, historical family transformations, the occurrence of some social transformations (such as changes in identity and freedom), the expansion and overshadowing of virtual space, women’s entry into the economic sphere, and the spread of feminism (especially radical and extremist feminism)—have spoken of love’s fluidity (although in practice, popular programs like Love Island, Eternal Love, Blind Date, and the like depict and promote love’s fluidity in action). Naturally, love accompanied by an ocean of energy and emotion, if considered fluid, becomes ineffective and even exploited by the capitalist system. This means that fluid love, predominantly body-based, is inherently coupled with consumerism, extensive use of cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, and in short, the body industry. Such a human is the ideal human of the capitalist system, as without claiming revolutionary zeal, through their mass consumption, they provide additional profits for the capitalist world. Meanwhile, with the presented field evidence derived from logical research (forthcoming publication), one can, while accepting the tendency of emotional love toward fluidity, mention the endurance of love in value-based and value-oriented loves. Thus, in a brief summary, it becomes clear that by viewing love as enduring, it possesses the capacity to lead to the transcendence of the individual, their society, and their global community.
In the subtitle “Reasons for Keeping Unspoken Love Unspoken,” an attempt has been made to present an overview of the reasons for unspoken love remaining unspoken, as narrated by interviewees. The following topics are discussed in this section:
Considering the concealment of love as the greater jihad, modesty and shame, self-pride, feeling the beloved is unattainable, foresight in relationships, fear of losing reputation and being exposed, love proposals not being accepted from girls in societal norms, fear that unspoken love is mistaken, fear of losing minimal connection with the beloved, fear of rejection and failure in love, knowing that the person of interest loves someone else, the beloved being married or on the verge of marriage, fear of harsh reactions from family and associates, incompatibility of life requirements between individuals, existence of family disputes, differences in belief levels of individuals or their families, differences in socio-cultural levels of families, differences in economic levels of families, low capacity of the counterpart, young age and lack of economic power in men, feeling shame in front of mutual friends.
In examining how latent love forms, reference is made to the cognitive and emotional bases playing a role in love, emphasizing that depending on whether the foundation of unspoken love is cognitive or emotional, relatively different outcomes will result. The following topics are discussed in this section:
Attractions of the beloved’s personality, attraction of similarities in interests and ideals with the beloved, lifestyle of the person in question, sense of security, attraction of a woman’s modesty and chastity, moral and belief-based attractions of the individual, opening new horizons before the individual, empathy and being understood by the counterpart, physical or sexual attraction of the beloved, media influences, unspoken love replacing real love due to family restrictions, pursuing love in the face of life voids, attachment to childhood playmates and acquaintances, playing together in digital games, establishing open relationships with discerning children, using pornographic literature, efforts to obtain one’s desires through the beloved, courtship, personality instability, superstitious thoughts, creating conditions for unspoken love for revenge against the opposite sex, establishing emotional relationships for exploitation.
In the last subtitle of the introduction, several necessary notes are provided regarding the “field study of latent or unspoken love,” emphasizing that unspoken love, despite its weak theoretical literature, possesses astonishing ups and downs and displays infinite power before observers. Continuing, unspoken love is divided into emotion-based unspoken love and cognition-based unspoken love, with emphasis on the difference between these two. This section concludes with notes on the prevalence of unspoken love among individuals, the ease of its formation, its duration, and similar matters.
Next, based on field findings, the “initial signs of unspoken love” are examined as follows:
Readiness for experiencing the wondrous phenomenon of love, sudden emergence of unspoken love, emergence of some biological changes upon encountering the beloved, prominent role of excitement in forming unspoken loves, transformative power of unspoken love, experiencing different emotions, being awestruck by the greatness of love, gaining delicacy in the flow of unspoken love, seeing the universe beautifully, experiencing a type of mysticism, increased courage and boldness in passionate lovers, inclination toward poetry and literature, greater attention to environmental factors, idealistic perception of the beloved, projecting one’s mental ideals onto the beloved, wishful perception, love’s mobilizing effect, feeling joy and delight, interest in remaining in the seat of coquetry, interest in meeting the beloved, efforts to attract the beloved’s attention, efforts to spend time together with the beloved, setting aside pride when facing the beloved, fantasizing, initial doubts and efforts to deny love, minimal knowledge of the beloved, and other cases.
After examining the “initial signs of unspoken love,” the “mid-path signs of unspoken love” are reviewed. These include:
Continuation of some biological changes upon encountering the beloved, emergence of some biological signs in the absence of the beloved, (continuation of) experiencing different emotions, (continuation of) gaining delicacy in the flow of unspoken love, seeing the universe even more beautifully, experiencing a type of mysticism, self-sacrifice for the beloved, increased courage and boldness, feeling unity with the beloved, desire to marry the beloved, increased creativity, inclination toward romantic literature, literary flourishing and inclination toward arts, memoir-writing, imaginary letter-writing, continued greater attention to environmental factors, inclination toward introversion, continuation of love’s energizing effect, continuation of love’s mobilizing effect, arousal of competitive spirit with the beloved, increased motivation, enhanced purposefulness in life, improved self-confidence in those involved in love, attention to the beloved’s personality attractions, (continuation of) attention to the beloved’s physical attractions, remaining awestruck by the beloved, reduced self-control in front of the beloved, interest in meeting the beloved, planning to meet the beloved, feeling peace, security, and pleasure near the beloved, efforts to find an excuse to meet the beloved, ignoring other members of the opposite sex, restlessness in the beloved’s absence, experiencing passion and delight upon the beloved’s attention, efforts to attract the beloved’s attention, worry about one’s own insufficient physical attractiveness, efforts to adorn oneself more beautifully, resorting to coquetry and flirtation before the beloved, efforts to perfect oneself more completely, expending extensive energy to prepare for meetings, efforts to remain in the seat of coquetry, efforts to censor one’s romantic emotions and feelings, endeavors to apply censorship in one’s logical conclusions, efforts to get closer to the beloved, pursuing clever interactions to achieve one’s goals, efforts to open a path to the beloved’s mother’s heart, indirect expressions of love, efforts to mislead before the beloved, friends, and family, praising and sanctifying the beloved, sanctification, preparing gifts for the beloved, efforts to care for the beloved, cautious behavior with the beloved to avoid hurting them, joy from the beloved’s attention, nervousness upon seeing the beloved, speech disruption when talking to the beloved, interest in conversing with the beloved, desire to talk about the beloved with others, thinking of the beloved, dreaming of the beloved, collecting and recording the beloved’s memories, voice, and image; keeping mementos from the beloved, memorable experiences, efforts to know the person of interest better, feeling a peak experience when meeting the beloved, resorting to the sixth sense, maximal reaction to minor behaviors, attention to the beloved’s behavioral details, fantasizing about marriage and life together with the beloved, pursuing some symbolic behaviors, modeling the beloved in formal behavioral and value dimensions, creating a sense of dependency on the beloved, discovering some inner capacities, the role of friends in each other’s unspoken love, efforts to find common ground with the beloved, endeavors to progress in various fields, maternal behavior toward the person of interest, breaking one’s pride for love, deepening unspoken love over time, wasting time, pursuing clever behaviors toward the beloved, displaying the powerful decoding ability of the feminine gender in communicative relations and unspoken love, loss of the superior decoding ability of the feminine gender when facing intense excitements, efforts to emotionally vent, fear of self, others’ reactions, and one’s future, considering attention to other opposite-sex individuals as betrayal, considering relationships with others as betrayal, considering accepting suitors and marriage as betrayal, emergence of romantic obsessions, prioritizing personality over physical attraction, prominent role of sexual issues in masculine unspoken love, desire for sexual relations with the beloved, enduring psychological pressure from role-playing and misdirection before others, experiencing emotional turbulences, accepting to auction one’s reputation to reach the beloved, longing and worry for the beloved, engraving the beloved’s memories in the mind, feeling jealousy and possessiveness over the beloved, efforts to present oneself better in virtual space, tracking the beloved in virtual space, indirectly testing the beloved, reduced and lost focus, (continuation of) idealistic perception, danger of projecting one’s ideals onto the beloved, wishful and directed perception, disruption in perceiving the passage of time, experiencing forgetting one’s situation and statements, self-extinction, self-deception, disruption in performing individual and social duties, disruption in family relations, efforts to deceive the family, family intervention in the child’s unspoken love, increased intensity of love due to the family’s irrational opposition, humiliation by the beloved, resorting to humiliating actions to get closer to the beloved, fear of rivals emerging, sensitivity and jealousy toward rivals, feeling ill at the thought of rivals, feeling hostility toward potential rivals, creating doubts mid-path in unspoken love, sorrowful exit from one’s fantasies upon encountering the real world, feeling trapped in a dead end, confusion, irritability and sensitivity, feeling tired of bearing the heavy load of love, confusion of modern girls and women when facing traditional men, suspension of thinking and rationality amid emotional turmoil, not seeing each other’s moral and doctrinal differences, relative feelings of fear and anxiety, emergence of severe mood swings, anger toward the beloved, escaping thoughts of failure by seeking refuge in ambiguity and suspense, problems from lacking a codified value system, being exploited by the beloved, resorting to slander and cursing the beloved, formation of some reverse reactions, remaining in conflict between reason and emotion, admitting to irrational and insane behaviors, gradual realization by the lover of the beloved’s flaws, lover’s desire to ignore the beloved’s flaws, lover’s readiness to spend for their unspoken love, becoming less or more talkative, lack of sufficient knowledge as the greatest danger, experiencing a type of delusion, emergence of some physical problems, shock from the possibility of losing the beloved, emergence of some psychological disorders, seeking refuge in God, greater attention to prayer and religious acts, resorting to vows and supplications, distancing from God, seeking refuge in superstitions, resorting to substance abuse for temporary calm, and other cases.
Finally, after examining the “initial” and “mid-path” signs of unspoken love, the “final signs” of this love are discussed. The topics covered in this section are:
Rational confrontation with one’s unspoken love, prioritizing heavenly love over earthly love, developing a transcendent view of love and losing interest in superficial emotional relations, finding peace by seeking refuge in God, turning to God, transforming individual love into communal love, reporting a type of growth, achieving self-critique, self-knowledge, and self-improvement; increased seriousness and purposefulness in the individual, optimal use of bitter experiences from the unspoken love period, elevating future selection criteria, replacing emotions with logic, feeling liberation and freedom from mental entanglements, considering oneself worthy of admiration, efforts to preserve memories of the beloved, feeling happy, changing the direction of attention, seeking help from a psychologist, realizing the beloved’s flaws, long-term continuation of biological signs in unspoken love, seeking spiritual treatments, self-control stemming from a coherent value system, pursuing self-talk and self-suggestion, welcoming art therapy, pursuing occupational therapy, psychological venting, environmental separation, feeling tired of one-sided love and welcoming two-sided love, preventing rekindling of the relationship after both parties marry, effect of the passage of time, changes and transformations in the concept of love, incredulous confrontation with the failure of one’s unspoken love, seeing the universe as ugly and dark, the power of love, denial of self-extinction, diminution of the lover’s emotions and feelings after the beloved’s marriage, transforming idealistic perception to anti-idealistic, losing empathy and becoming indifferent to others’ pain and suffering, feeling sadness, anger, and rage toward the beloved; feeling loss due to excess in remaining in coquetry, feeling persistent fatigue, feeling fed up with new emotional relationships, disillusionment and loss of marriage enthusiasm, realization of selfish love, emergence of doctrinal transformations in the lover, protesting against the Creator, loss of false growth, loss of self-confidence, feeling loss of many life opportunities, becoming pessimistic about love, pessimistic toward the opposite sex, cynicism and distrust toward the same sex, pursuing reactionary behaviors, regretting improper family intervention, circumventing and deceiving the family, slandering and cursing the lost beloved, transforming love into hatred, self-entanglement, experiencing severe mood swings, girls’ confusion, remaining in the beloved’s romantic world, loss of one’s emotional capital, dominance of coldness over life, reaching emotional numbness, making hasty and incorrect decisions, disruption in performing duties, resorting to substance abuse, distraction and forgetfulness, feeling regret, expecting a miracle, wishing the beloved remains single forever, wishing for one’s own death after the beloved’s marriage, wishing for the beloved’s divorce or spouse’s death, confronting some psychological disorders, entanglement in suicidal or homicidal thoughts, and other cases.