Ephesians 4:15
A few weeks ago I wrote an article titled 4 Reasons God Let You Fall in Love with Someone Who Does Not Love You Back. Many of you asked the follow up question, “Why would God allow someone to fall in love with me even though I don’t love them back?”
So here are 4 possible answers to that question.
1. God May Have Let Someone Fall in Love with You Even Though You Don’t Love Them Back Because You May Need Someone to Love You First Before You Are Free to Love Them in Return
Relationships are never formulaic, meaning no two relationships are exactly the same. We all go through different past experiences and we all have different current experiences with people. I point this out because sometimes there are people (not all people are like this) who are so guarded because of past wounds that they will never open up to anyone unless someone first shows them an abundance of love and commitment even though they are not yet willing to reciprocate that love immediately.
I’m not saying this is ideal. I’m not saying it is healthy for someone to chase you around and confess their love for you even though you are pushing them away. But there are instances where God will actually allow one person to love the other person before that love will be reciprocated, even though one day it actually will be reciprocated.
You may be one of those people. Therefore, it is possible God let someone fall in love with you even though you don’t love them back (yet) because you need someone like this. You may need someone who is so in love with you that they aren’t scared off by your guardedness and fear of love. Perhaps over time, this person’s love for you will break down your walls and then you will learn to love them in return.
In one way, this is what happens to all of us in our relationship with God. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” We are wounded, fearful, and running from God when he finds us. He loves us before we love him. His love draws us in, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness,” (Jeremiah 31:3, NIV)
Of course this is just one possibility for why God allowed someone to fall in love with you even though you don’t love them back. In fact, I would say this is one of the least likely possibilities. But it certainly does happen sometimes.
2. God May Have Let Someone Fall in Love with You Even Though You Don’t Love Them Back to Teach You Both to Have Better Boundaries with the Opposite Sex
I’m not against male to female friendships for Christian singles. I think it is really good to have friends from the opposite sex. You can learn a lot from each other and even if you never have any romantic interest in one another, as friends from the opposite sex God can actually use that friendship to prepare you both to meet your future spouses. Through friendships Christians can learn to talk to a people from the opposite sex, learn how to treat them with respect, and learn how they are different from each other.
With that said, I also believe it is unwise to think that male to female friendships are the exact same as male to male friendships or female to female friendships. We can try to deny this reality as much as we want, but it does not change the fact that God made men and women to connect with each other in a certain way that is not possible between the same genders. Therefore, there is always a high likelihood in male to female friendships that romantic feelings will eventually begin to grow.
And this isn’t bad! It’s actually good. Many healthy marriages were formed on the foundation of a good friendship between a man and woman. And it’s not even wrong if one friend begins to like the other but the feelings are not mutual. This is a part of life. This is a part of the process of finding the one. You will end up having romantic feelings for people who you don’t end up marrying.
Problems only arise when we let these dynamics run rampant without any wisdom. In other words, people start getting hurt when friends of the opposite sex are unwilling to put up healthy boundaries that should be in place between friends of the opposite sex. It’s fine to share your deepest secretes with a friend of the same gender, to go to them when you really need help, or to spend massive amounts of time just hanging out. But when you do this with a friend from the opposite sex, someone is usually going to fall for the other and if the feelings are not mutual that’s when people get hurt.
You may not mean to have done this, but it’s entirely possible God let someone fall in love with you who you do not love back because you inadvertently led them on to believe you loved them too by not having healthy boundaries in your friendship with them.
Notice the extra care Paul told Timothy to have with single women around his age, “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity,” (1 Timothy 5:1-2). By tacking on this extra information to Timothy about women his age (“in all purity”), he showed us we should not deny the undeniable extra variables between the sexes.
3. God Let Someone Fall in Love with You Even Though You Don’t Love Them Back Because God Lets People Believe What They Want, Therefore We Need to Be Careful Who We Trust
We can’t control other people. While it’s possible you could have done something to prevent this person from getting the wrong idea about you, it’s also just as possible that there is nothing you could have done to prevent this person from falling in love with you. Like the scene in Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd confesses his love for Mary:
Lloyd: What are my chances?
Mary: Not good.
Lloyd: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?
Mary: I’d say more like one out of a million.
Lloyd: So you’re telling me there’s a chance. YEAH!
In all seriousness, some people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and believe what they want to believe. Therefore, it’s entirely possible God let this person fall in love with you even though you don’t love them back simply because this person is choosing to believe they are seeing signs they will be with you even though they really are not.
Perhaps God will use this experience of them falling for you to help them mature and follow God’s will better (Hebrews 12:6). Perhaps God is using you in their life to help discipline and train them in ways that they need to be trained so God can bless them. Perhaps your kind rejection of them is actually a good deed God wanted you to do for them out of love so they can learn not to idolize people, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1).
4. God May Have Let Someone Fall in Love with You Even Though You Don’t Love Them Back Because You Are Developing into a Very Desirable Person
I don’t think people should be shocked and horrified when someone likes them. While you may not want to deal with the drama of telling someone you don’t feel the same way, in the end this type of situation should really be seen as a compliment.
Of course we don’t want to find our validation in what people think of us (Galatians 1:10). We need to be careful we are not purposefully leading people on so we can get an ego boost (Romans 2:29). But in the end, it’s completely natural and healthy for other singles to be attracted to you and like you if you are developing into a godly man or woman.
If someone likes you who you don’t like back, let them down in kindness but also see this as a compliment.
If you haven’t yet read the article where I talk about the other side of this, here’s the link: 4 Reasons God Let You Fall in Love with Someone Who Does Not Love You Back
