Relationships & Heartbreak · Hypnosis session
Unrequited Love, and the No That Never Quite Arrived
You know how they take their coffee, which song makes them turn the radio up, and whose name they mentioned on Friday. It wasn’t yours. This page covers why unrequited love lingers, four free steps drawn from the research, and a twenty-two-minute recording that gives you a regular, quiet place to practise them.
Two quick checks before anything else.
When the person who doesn’t love you back is your partnerUnrequited love can happen inside a relationship: you’re together, and the love runs mostly one way. If that person frightens you, controls where you go, goes through your phone or tracks where you are, or hurts you, or leaving feels too dangerous to try, that isn’t heartbreak, and this site sells no recording for it.
- 1800RESPECT, 1800 737 732, or text 0458 737 732. Day or night.
- If you’re in danger right now, 000.
- Relationships Australia, 1300 364 277, for counselling.
The second thing is time. If the sadness has gone on for weeks and is getting in the way of work or sleep, or you’ve had thoughts of not wanting to be here, start with a GP. Under Medicare’s Better Access, a GP referral through a Mental Health Treatment Plan can get you up to 10 individual sessions in a calendar year, Medicare-subsidised, with a psychologist or other eligible mental health professional. If tonight is hard, the line below is open now.
Free and confidential, open now. Tap to call.
Unrequited Love
Twenty-two minutes of guided relaxation for when one person takes up too much of your day, made for replaying, with a free preview and ninety days to change your mind.
US$18.95one-off · no subscription · about A$27
I earn a commission if you buy through this page. It doesn’t change what you pay, and it doesn’t decide what I recommend.
Checkout opens on hypnosisdownloads.com in a new tab. Priced in US dollars; some cards add a foreign-transaction fee. Ninety days to change your mind, nothing to justify.
The publisher reports 4,045 purchases of this title.
Chosen by Ernest McLeodClinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. About Ernest →
How many of these are true?
- You’re the one they ring about someone else, and you give good advice
- There’s a card or a ticket stub you haven’t thrown out, and you know which drawer
- One conversation from a year or more ago has been replayed with a different ending
- Your plans get made around when they might be free
- You still count the kisses at the end of their texts
Most of them? Then this page is yours. If you’ve barely spoken to this person, the crush page suits you better.
What does a recording add?
A set time and a quiet place for the steps below. The session is twenty-two minutes of guided relaxation, made to be replayed, and people use it to rehearse three things: letting attention go elsewhere, easing off the checking, and filling a week that isn’t organised around one person.
The largest recent review of hypnosis for pain (Yim and Derbyshire, 2026) compared how it was delivered and found no meaningful difference between a live clinician, a recording and self-hypnosis. Montgomery and colleagues’ 2002 review of 20 controlled studies with surgical patients found “no significant differences” between live and audiotaped induction. That research was on pain and surgery, not on unrequited love, but it’s the best evidence there is that a recording isn’t a second-rate version of sitting in a room with someone.
Why does unrequited love hurt so much?
Partly because it never gets an ending. In Baumeister, Wotman and Stillwell’s 1993 study of people’s own accounts, the ones who loved without being loved back often believed the attraction had been mutual, felt they’d been led on, and said the rejection was never made definite. No breakup, no last conversation, nothing to grieve out loud. The hope simply never gets a date to stop.
The paper’s title lists heartbreak, anger, guilt, scriptlessness and humiliation. Scriptlessness is the useful word: a breakup comes with rituals, but loving someone who is fond of you and no more comes with none, so you improvise, and improvising mostly means waiting.
The turning-down side wasn’t enjoying it either. Those people saw themselves as blameless, still felt guilty for hurting someone, and many found the persistence intrusive. The authors called it bilaterally distressing: two people, both unhappy.
Bringle, Winnick and Rydell’s 2013 study adds one more thing: it rated every kind of unrequited love as less intense than mutual love on passion, commitment and dependency, but more intense on turmoil. Less of the good part of love. More of the churn.
Is it unrequited love or a crush?
It comes down to how tangled your life is with theirs. Bringle’s team laid unrequited love out on a line from least to most interdependent: a crush on someone unavailable, a crush on someone nearby, pursuing someone, longing for a past lover, and an unequal relationship where you’re together but the love runs one way. The further along that line, the more this page is yours.
A crush can live on glimpses. The later kinds are built from history: years of friendship, a relationship that ended for them and not for you, a partner who is kind and not in love. If yours is still at the glimpses end, getting over a crush is the better page.
How do you get over someone who isn’t interested in you?
Gradually, and with a trade-off. In Langeslag and Sanchez’s 2018 experiments with people after a breakup, thinking about the other person’s less appealing traits reduced love feelings but left people feeling worse in the moment. Distraction lifted their mood and left the love where it was. Those were short effects in a laboratory, not weeks of recovery. The sensible reading is to pair them: a brief look at the whole person, then something absorbing.
Unrequited LoveUS$18.95 · instant download · full refund within 90 days if it isn’t right.
Opens the publisher’s checkout in a new tab. Or keep reading — the free techniques below cost nothing.
Four free things follow from that. None is quick, and the recording is a good place to practise them.
- Stop waiting for a clearer no
If the answer has been vague for months, the vagueness is doing some of the damage. In Baumeister’s accounts, the loving side kept saying the rejection had never been made definite. You can decide the answer is in. If you’ve already asked, don’t ask again: the same study found persistence landed as intrusive. If you never have, one plain question may be worth its cost. Once.
- Write down the whole person, then leave the list
Ten minutes on what you’d rather not see: the times they were careless with you, what you’d have had to give up. That’s the negative reappraisal from the Langeslag study, done with people after a breakup, and the only strategy there that loosened love feelings. It also lowered mood, so don’t sit with the list. Go straight into something that needs your full attention, where distraction earns its place.
- Write about what’s yours, not about them
In Lewandowski’s 2009 trial, 87 people whose relationships had ended were randomly assigned to write about the positives, the negatives, or something neutral. The positive group came away with more positive emotion straight afterwards; the three groups didn’t differ on negative feelings. Keep it short and pointed forward. In Sbarra’s 2013 trial of 90 separated adults, those still hunting for why it happened fared worse for as long as nine months when given intensive emotional writing.
- Put back what got arranged around them
The Thursday you kept free. The friend you dropped because the two of them didn’t get on. In Larson and Sbarra’s 2015 study of 210 people after a separation, those who reflected on it across four research visits over nine weeks rebuilt a clearer sense of self, and that shift accounted for fewer intrusive feelings and less loneliness. It was about breakups, but the principle carries: you’re rebuilding a self they were never part of.
What is in the Unrequited Love session?
One guided session of twenty-two minutes and seven seconds, narrated by Roger Elliott, made to be played more than once. The publisher describes it as for someone preoccupied with a person who doesn’t return their feelings; it gives you a regular, relaxed time to practise turning attention back to other parts of life.
Unrequited Love
US$18.95About A$27 · one-off, no subscription.
- 22 minutes 7 seconds, narrated by Roger Elliott of Uncommon Knowledge
- Instant MP3 download, yours to keep
- Free preview available, so you can check the voice suits you before paying
- For someone who is safe at home and whose feelings have outlasted any real hope
Checkout opens on the publisher’s site in a new tab
Can you stop it halfway if it doesn’t feel right?
Yes, whenever you like. You stay aware of the room, you hear every word, and pausing it is no different from pausing a podcast. You’re free to let a suggestion that doesn’t fit pass by. Two limits: never in the car or while operating anything, and people with epilepsy should talk to their doctor before using any relaxation recording.
The publisher’s own count: 4,045 purchases of this title.
Self-reported by the publisher: a count of sales, not of results.
What does the research say about hypnosis and unrequited love?
It hasn’t been studied directly. When this page was researched on 25 September 2026, a PubMed search pairing hypnosis with unrequited love, heartbreak, breakups and lovesickness returned a single record, a toxicology case report. No controlled trial exists. The closest evidence is face-to-face hypnotherapy for grief after a death, which is a different kind of loss.
In Çınaroğlu and colleagues’ 2026 trial, 39 students grieving a death were divided three ways, hypnotherapy, CBT or a waiting list, roughly 13 apiece. Both treatments beat waiting. The same group has published an unusual number of trials in a short time, so an independent repeat would make it firmer.
Who is this wrong for?
Anyone whose problem is bigger than the feeling. In the situations below, someone in person will help more than a recording: a GP this week for any of the first three, and a counsellor for the last three, which are better talked through than listened to.
- The person is your partner, and you are frightened of them or of leaving. That’s the safety box above.
- The low mood has run for weeks and is costing you sleep or work.
- You’ve had thoughts of not wanting to be here.
- You’re still messaging, following or turning up after being asked not to. Stopping comes first, and a counsellor can help.
- It’s the same shape every time: always someone fond of you and no more. That pattern is worth talking through.
- What you really want is for them to change their mind. Nothing in this session is built to do that.
Free and confidential, open now. Tap to call.
Common questions about unrequited love
How long does unrequited love last?
Nobody has timed it. The closest study, by Verhallen and colleagues in 2022, checked in with 87 people every other week for 30 weeks following a breakup. Four patterns emerged: 38 resilient, 22 who recovered fast, 19 who recovered slowly, and 8 still distressed at the end. The slower groups scored higher on a tendency to ruminate. That was a breakup, not unrequited love, so it’s a rough guide.
Why can’t I get over someone I never dated?
Because there was nothing to end. In Baumeister’s 1993 study, people on the loving side often believed the attraction had been mutual and that the rejection was never made definite, so hope was never given a finish. Bringle’s 2013 study found unrequited love less intense than mutual love on passion and commitment, but higher in turmoil.
Is unrequited love common?
Very. In Bringle, Winnick and Rydell’s 2013 study, unrequited love of every kind turned up four times more often than mutual love over a two-year period. They described five kinds, running from a crush on someone unattainable to a relationship where the love runs one way.
Is it normal to feel depressed over unrequited love?
Low mood after romantic loss is well documented, and it isn’t always mild. In a 2019 Dutch study of 71 people after a breakup, 26.8% had symptoms at the level of mild, moderate or severe depression. If yours has gone on for weeks, is getting in the way of work or sleep, or comes with thoughts of not wanting to be here, make a GP appointment. Lifeline is on 13 11 14, any hour.
Does hypnosis work for unrequited love?
Hypnosis offers a focused, relaxed state for rehearsing new habits of attention, and a recording lets you return to it as often as you like. It hasn’t been tested for unrequited love: no controlled trial for unrequited love, heartbreak or breakups exists, and the database search behind this page, on 25 September 2026, found nothing relevant. The closest is a small 2026 trial of face-to-face hypnotherapy with 39 grieving students, a different kind of loss.
Is there a preview, and can I get a refund?
Both. The publisher has a free preview on its page, so you can check the voice suits you. If you buy it and it doesn’t help, the whole price comes back within 90 days once you give the publisher your order number, no reason needed. One order per customer. Nothing about the refund runs through me, so keep the order email.
If this isn’t quite your situation
- Get Over a CrushIf you’ve barely spoken and it runs on glimpses rather than history
- Overcome Rejection SensitivityIf being turned down by anyone lands this hard, not only by them
- Self Esteem BoosterIf the worst part is what you think this says about your worth
- The relationships guideGetting over someone, in all its versions, and which session fits
Pick one of the four free steps above and do it before the weekend.
Where these numbers come from
- Baumeister RF, Wotman SR, Stillwell AM. Unrequited love: on heartbreak, anger, guilt, scriptlessness, and humiliation. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1993;64(3):377-94. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.3.377
- Bringle RG, Winnick T, Rydell RJ. The prevalence and nature of unrequited love. SAGE Open. 2013;3(2):2158244013492160. doi:10.1177/2158244013492160
- Langeslag SJE, Sanchez ME. Down-regulation of love feelings after a romantic break-up: self-report and electrophysiological data. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2018;147(5):720-33. doi:10.1037/xge0000360
- Lewandowski GW Jr. Promoting positive emotions following relationship dissolution through writing. J Posit Psychol. 2009;4(1):21-31. doi:10.1080/17439760802068480
- Sbarra DA, Boals A, Mason AE, et al. Expressive writing can impede emotional recovery following marital separation. Clin Psychol Sci. 2013;1(2):120-34. doi:10.1177/2167702612469801
- Larson GM, Sbarra DA. Participating in research on romantic breakups promotes emotional recovery via changes in self-concept clarity. Soc Psychol Personal Sci. 2015;6(4):399-406. doi:10.1177/1948550614563085
- Verhallen AM, Alonso-Martínez S, Renken RJ, et al. Depressive symptom trajectory following romantic relationship breakup and effects of rumination, neuroticism and cognitive control. Stress Health. 2022;38(4):653-65. doi:10.1002/smi.3123
- Verhallen AM, Renken RJ, Marsman JC, et al. Romantic relationship breakup: an experimental model to study effects of stress on depression (-like) symptoms. PLoS One. 2019;14(5):e0217320. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0217320
- Çınaroğlu M, Yılmazer E, Ülker SV, et al. Effects of Ericksonian hypnotherapy versus cognitive behavioral therapy on prolonged grief among university students: a randomized clinical trial. Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2026;74(1):93-120. doi:10.1080/00207144.2025.2464747
- Yim TH, Derbyshire SWG. A systematic review of hypnosis for clinical pain relief. Eur J Pain. 2026;30(8):e70369. doi:10.1002/ejp.70369
- Montgomery GH, David D, Winkel G, Silverstein JH, Bovbjerg DH. The effectiveness of adjunctive hypnosis with surgical patients: a meta-analysis. Anesth Analg. 2002;94(6):1639-45. doi:10.1097/00000539-200206000-00052
- Australian Government Department of Health. Better Access initiative. health.gov.au/our-work/better-access-initiative
Ernest McLeod, clinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice.
- ICHP
- FELLOW, ASCH
- IICT MEMBER
I chose this session because it aims at the time this person takes up in your day, not at changing how they feel. More →
Twenty-two minutes you can sample first, refundable for ninety days
If you’re safe, sleeping, and tired of the space this person takes up in your day, it’s a straightforward thing to try.
US$18.95Instant download · 90-day refund · about A$27
Results vary from person to person, and hypnosis does not replace medical care or treatment. This is a self-help audio session, not a diagnosis or a substitute for professional care. If sadness has gone on for weeks, or you have thoughts of not wanting to be here, book a GP or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. If a partner frightens, controls, monitors or hurts you, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In immediate danger, call 000.