Sometimes we fall in love with people with whom we will never be able to build a relationship. Impossible loves exist, and most people who experience them do not give up in the face of impossibility: They always retain the hope of being able to tear down the walls of impossibility. Why do we like to stay in this cloud?

Why are some loves impossible?

There are impossible loves that are imprisoned in the prejudices we have:

• Because of age. For example, it occurs mainly in heterosexual couples in which the man is younger than the woman.
• Due to classism, homophobia, lesbophobia, racism or xenophobia… There are people who see love as impossible because of the rejection they may suffer in their environment, such as black and white couples, gay couples, couples in which one member is a foreigner, couples in which each one has their own religion…
• Because of the distance. If one lives in Australia and the other in Costa Rica, if one lives six months at sea and the other on land, if one has a three-year scholarship in China and the other person has a job in Morocco…

• Due to personal circumstances of one of the members of the couple. If one of the two is married and does not plan to separate, if one belongs to a cloistered religious institution, if a heterosexual man falls in love with a lesbian woman, or a heterosexual woman falls in love with a gay man…
• When it is an unrequited love. Very impossible loves are those in which there is no correspondence, that is, when you fall in love with someone who does not fall in love with you, who does not feel the same about you, and does not want to be with you. And despite that, sometimes they are not considered completely impossible, because, lovers say, hope is the last thing that is lost.
• Because they are really impossible. There are loves that are completely impossible to live in reality, such as those in which death separates the lovers, or those in which the loved one does not know the person who loves them.

Why do we continue dreaming about those loves?

As incredible as it may sound, there are people who prefer to live impossible loves because living love in a platonic way allows us to imagine it tailored to each person. Relationships in reality are more difficult than imaginary ones or those that are felt from a distance. First because inevitably, reality always disappoints us.

• In platonic love there are no disappointments. Our expectations about love are so high, we idealize love so much, that when we can experience it in our own flesh we become disillusioned because it is never how it was sold to us. It does not spring up on its own, it is not eternal, it is not magical: love must be nourished and cared for so that it grows.

The man or woman in love lives a bit of their imagination: they idealize the object of their love as much as they want because they know that they will not have to see it at its natural size.

• Our dreamed loved ones are perfect. Loving someone from a distance allows us to always have them on the throne because, since we don’t get to know them well, they never disappoint us. Impossible love does not end: being a product of the imagination, it can last a lifetime, and without deteriorating due to coexistence.

• Impossible loves are eternal. Because they are not eaten up by routine, coexistence, or boredom, and because being prohibited they excite us more than those allowed.
• Platonic love makes us dream. Impossible loves allow us to travel to a different reality, imagine it to our liking, live the love experience in a parallel universe.
• Imaginary love is substitutive. Impossible loves are, in some way, barriers that we put up to avoid facing reality, to not truly fall in love, to live in another time that is not the here and now: it is the imaginary time of the lover, we have total control over it.

You can have more than one impossible love at a time because dreams are free, and love is also an experience of freedom.

• Impossible loves accompany us a lot because they are always there reminding us of what could not be but at some point could have been, or could become. These impossible loves allow us to fly, they allow us to feel that we are not condemned to the reality of our daily lives, they connect us with possibilities and opportunities, with those doors that are there and could open one day.

Impossible loves are illusions and we must try not to let them prevent us live love with people with whom we can have a relationship, with the people who do belong to us, with the flesh and blood people with whom we interact every day, in the here and now.