We usually reserve the term unrequited love for teenagers and romantic comedies. We think of it as the sting of a text message left unopened or the heartbreak of deep affection that is not returned by the person we desire. It is a specific, lonely kind of grief.
But if you are a creator, an entrepreneur, or a leader, you know that unrequited love is not limited to romance. There’s also unrequited love in business.
The most crushing form of rejection often happens at 2:00 AM while you are staring at a laptop screen. It happens when you pour six months of your soul, your savings, and your sleep into a manuscript, a business launch, or a ministry project. You believe deeply in its potential. You nurture it. You sacrifice for it. You prioritize it above comfort and leisure.
Then comes the launch day. You release it into the world with high hopes, expecting the world to embrace it with the same fervor you felt while creating it.
And nothing happens.
The sales do not come. The applause is faint or nonexistent. The relationship you thought you had built with this dream suddenly feels incredibly one-sided. You loved the work. But the work did not love you back.
This is professional unrequited love. It carries a unique weight because it feels like a betrayal of the basic laws of cause and effect. We are taught that if we work hard, we will succeed. When that equation fails, we are left feeling foolish for caring so much. We feel betrayed by our own effort.
However, this painful moment is not the end of the road. It is the point where most people quit, but it is also the point where true professionals are born. This is the moment where you must decide if you are driven by a fleeting passion or anchored by a deep purpose.
Why We Fall So Hard
To understand why professional heartbreak hurts so much, we first have to understand why we started. In the creative life, we are constantly told to follow our passion. We are told to find what we love and let it kill us. We are encouraged to fall in love with the process.
So we do.
We treat our projects like new relationships. In the beginning, there is the honeymoon phase. The idea is fresh and exciting. We stay up late brainstorming, fueled by adrenaline and the vision of what could be. We ignore the red flags. We ignore the market research that suggests the path might be difficult. We are infatuated with the potential of the idea.
During this phase, we are not actually in love with the work itself; we are in love with the fantasy of the outcome. We imagine the bestseller list. We visualize the sold-out conference. We picture the financial freedom that this business will finally provide.
This mimicry of romantic love is dangerous because it sets up a transactional expectation. We subconsciously believe that because we have given so much of ourselves to the project, the project owes us something in return. We believe that our sacrifice guarantees a reward. But the market is not a lover. It does not care about your sleepless nights. It does not care about the sacrifices you made or the events you missed to get the product launched. The market only cares about value.
When the market responds with silence, it feels personal. It feels like a rejection of you as a human being. But in reality, it is simply feedback. The pain we feel is the shattering of the transactional contract we created in our heads. We gave our love, and we expected the world to love us back in the form of money, status, or praise.
When that does not happen, the passion burns out. Passion is a powerful fuel, but it is dirty. It burns hot and fast, and it requires a constant supply of external validation to keep going. When the validation stops, the passion dies.
This is where many creators give up. They assume that because the love was not returned, the pursuit was a mistake. They pack up their tools and go home, convinced they are failures.
But there is a better way.
The Silence of the Market
Let us look at what this rejection actually looks like in practice. It is rarely a dramatic explosion. It is usually a quiet, suffocating silence.
For the writer, it is publishing a blog post you spent three days crafting, only to see the analytics flatline. It is releasing a book and struggling to get even ten reviews.
For the entrepreneur, it is launching a new service and hearing crickets in your inbox. It is spending thousands of naira on ads that convert no one.
For the pastor or leader, it is preparing a sermon series or a program with deep prayer and study, only for the attendance to be sparse and the engagement low.
This silence is disorienting. You begin to question your sanity. You wonder if you heard God correctly. You wonder if you have any talent at all. The voice of the impostor becomes very loud in these moments.
Who did you think you were?
Why did you think anyone would care about this?
You should have just stayed in your safe job.
This is the night of the soul for the creator. It is the moment of unrequited love where you realize the object of your affection is indifferent to your existence.
But here is the truth that can liberate you: The silence is not a stop sign.
The silence is a filter. It filters out the tourists from the true travelers. It filters out those who are doing it for the applause from those who are doing it for the purpose.
If you stop now, it proves that you were only in it for the transaction. You were only writing for the likes. You were only building for the cash. And while there is nothing wrong with wanting those things, they are not enough to sustain you through the valley of silence.
To survive professional unrequited love, you must undergo a fundamental shift in your internal operating system. You must transition from the fragile engine of passion to the unbreakable engine of purpose.
Passion vs. Purpose: The Critical Transition
We often use these two words interchangeably, but they are worlds apart. Understanding the difference is the key to longevity in any field.
Passion is about you.
It is about how the work makes you feel. It is about the excitement you get from the idea. It is about the validation you hope to receive. Passion is ego-centric. It asks: What can the world give me for doing this?
Purpose is about them.
It is about the value the work provides to others. It is about the problem you are solving. It is about the obedience to a calling that is bigger than your comfort. Purpose is service-centric. It asks: What can I give to the world through this?
When you are driven by passion, failure is fatal. If you do not get the feeling you wanted, there is no reason to continue.
When you are driven by purpose, failure is irrelevant. The goal was never just the outcome; the goal was the obedience of doing the work. If you helped one person, the purpose was fulfilled. If you learned one lesson, the purpose advanced.
Transitioning from passion to purpose allows you to detach your identity from the immediate results. It allows you to look at a failed launch and say, “This method failed, but the mission remains.”
This is how you survive unrequited love. You stop looking to the project to validate your worth. You realize that your worth is inherent, and your work is simply an expression of that worth, not the source of it.
The Danger of Outcome-Based Identity
The deepest pain of unrequited love comes from a case of mistaken identity. We wrongly believe that we are what we produce.
If I write a book, I am a writer.
If I start a business, I am an entrepreneur.
This seems logical, but it creates a fragile foundation. If you are a writer only because you wrote a book, then what happens if the book fails? Do you cease to be a writer? If your business goes bankrupt, do you lose your identity as an entrepreneur?
When we link our identity to our outcomes, we place our self-worth in the hands of factors we cannot control. We cannot control the algorithm. We cannot control the economy. We cannot control the mood of the buying public.
If your happiness depends on things you cannot control, you will be anxious and miserable. This is why unrequited love destroys so many promising careers. The pain of the rejection is too great because it feels like a death of the self.
To become resilient, you must anchor your identity in something deeper. You must anchor it in your character and your capacity, not your current output.
You are a writer because you write, not because you are on the bestseller list. You are an entrepreneur because you solve problems, not because you have a specific amount of money in the bank. You are a leader because you serve people, not because you have a title.
When you sever the link between your identity and your immediate success, you become dangerous. You become unstoppable. You can launch a project, watch it fail, learn the lesson, and launch the next one without losing a piece of your soul. You can experience unrequited love without being heartbroken.
Resilience as a Nigerian Birthright
We cannot discuss this topic without acknowledging our specific context. Living and working in a place like Nigeria adds a layer of complexity to professional unrequited love.
Here, the environment itself often feels like it is working against you. You might have the perfect business plan, but then the fuel price triples. You might have a brilliant digital product, but the network fails during your launch webinar. You might have a dedicated team, but the traffic makes it impossible for them to be productive.
In this context, failure is often not even your fault. It is systemic. This can make the unrequited love feel even more bitter. You did everything right, but the system failed you.
However, this environment also breeds a specific kind of resilience. We often joke about having coconut heads, a stubborn refusal to give up. This cultural trait is actually a superpower when applied to purpose.
Because nothing is easy here, we are trained in the art of persistence. We know how to pivot. We know how to find a way where there is no way.
If you can take that natural Nigerian resilience and couple it with a clear, service-oriented purpose, you have everything you need to outlast the silence. You have the grit to keep showing up when the world is not clapping.
Transitioning from Amateur to Professional
The author Steven Pressfield talks about the difference between the amateur and the professional.
The amateur writes when they feel inspired. The professional writes when they don’t.
The amateur is crushed by failure. The professional analyzes it.
The amateur craves the unrequited love of the audience. The professional loves the craft regardless of the audience.
If you are currently hurting because a dream didn’t pan out, it is time to turn pro. It is time to stop acting like a rejected lover and start acting like a committed leader.
This means you must stop taking the market’s silence personally. It means you must stop waiting for permission to be great. It means you must stop looking for the quick win and start playing the long game.
Unrequited love is the test that separates the amateurs from the professionals. The amateur quits because their feelings were hurt. The professional gets back to work because the work still needs to be done.
What to Do With Unrequited Love in Business
So, you have poured your heart out, and the results are not there. You are hurting. You are frustrated. What do you actually do next?
Here is a practical framework for managing professional unrequited love without giving up on your purpose.
1. Grieve the Loss
Do not pretend it doesn’t hurt. It is okay to be disappointed. It is okay to be angry that your hard work didn’t pay off immediately. Give yourself a set time to grieve; maybe a day, maybe a week. Write it down. Pray about it. Vent to a trusted friend. But put a time limit on it. Do not let disappointment become your permanent residence.
2. Conduct a Forensic Audit
Once the emotion has settled, engage your logical brain. Why did it fail? Was the product actually good, or was it just good in your head? Did you market it effectively? Was the timing wrong?
Be brutal with the facts but kind to yourself. Separate the who from the what. You are not a failure; the strategy failed. Strategies can be fixed.
3. Reconnect with Your Why
Go back to the beginning. Why did you start this in the first place? If it were just for the money, you would likely quit now, and perhaps you should. But if it was to solve a real problem or to express a God-given gift, then that reason still exists.
Remind yourself that the need is still there. The audience is still there, even if they haven’t found you yet. The purpose has not changed just because the method malfunctioned.
4. Pivot or Persist?
Now you have a choice. Do you keep pushing the same rock up the same hill, or do you change your approach?
Sometimes, persistence is just stubbornness in disguise. If the market is screaming “No,” listen to it. Maybe you need to repackage your idea. Maybe you need to change your distribution channel. Maybe you need to improve your skills.
True purpose is rigid about the destination but flexible about the route. Do not be so in love with your original plan that you refuse to see a better way to get there.
5. Find Joy in the Act Itself
This is the ultimate cure for unrequited love. You must learn to enjoy the work for its own sake.
If you are a writer, learn to love the act of wrestling with sentences, even if no one reads them yet. If you are a builder, learn to love the process of solving the puzzle.
When you find joy in the doing, you become immune to the silence. The external reward becomes a bonus, not a requirement. You reclaim your power because you no longer need the world to permit you to be happy.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves what we are really building.
Are we just building businesses and books, or are we building ourselves?
The projects that fail often do more for our character than the projects that succeed effortlessly. The struggle teaches us humility. It teaches us patience. It forces us to rely on something other than ourselves and builds a depth of soul that cannot be acquired any other way.
If you are in a season of unrequited love with your dream, do not despair. Do not walk away. Wipe the tears. Analyze the data. Adjust the plan. And then sit back down. Do the work because it matters. Do the work because it is who you are. Do the work because the world needs it, even if the world doesn’t know it yet.
That is the definition of purpose. And that is a love that never fails.
What is a failed project that taught you the most about yourself? Share your story in the comments so we can learn from each other.
