Unrequited love. We see it everywhere. Books, songs, movies, TV shows, poems, friends, ourselves -- you get the point.

Most of the time, the story usually plays out as someone liking someone who doesn't like them back and victimizes themselves. And yet, somehow, we find that "beautiful."

Throughout our lives, the media has been feeding us these ideas that unrequited love is this great skill of being able to love someone who doesn't love you back.

And while that may be arguably true, it just isn't healthy to have that kind of skill.

I'd like to state that if a person is just not into you, that doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. Just like there is nothing wrong with them.

It's no one's fault, really.

Sometimes, in movies, the unrequited love blossoms into a relationship, but that isn't the case most of the time in real life. We have to understand how to separate fantasy and reality.

Life isn't a movie.

We have to understand that if someone doesn't like us, then maybe they aren't worth pining over.

If someone doesn't like you back? That should be a turn-off. It should NOT make you like the person even more. Because as a human being, you deserve to be loved/loved back. Pining and yearning for them just isn't that fun when they aren't doing the same for you.

Society has been brewing this idea that pain is beautiful. And for some reason, whenever I have an assignment to read or watch a film about unrequited love, students say that it's romantic or beautiful.

But pain isn't beautiful.

Pain is pain.

Pain is ugly.

Pain is terrible.

It upsets me when people confuse love as being painful. And while love sometimes comes with pain -- love, itself, is not pain.

Love is love.

It is blissfulness.

It is joy.

It is warmth.

I understand that unrequited love is a real thing. And I am not saying that it shouldn't exist. I just think that we should stop romanticizing it as a greater love than when two people share love. Or when one loves themselves. Requited love.

So I end this article with some thoughts/advice: Understand your worth. And learn what love is. It starts with the inner-self, and the rest will come along. Rejection may happen. Unrequited love may happen. Love is not pain. And pain is not love. They sometimes go hand in hand, but are not the same thing. It's time that the world (mostly the media) to stop romanticizing unrequited love as this beautiful concept.