1.

“I felt like a little kid standing outside a glass storeroom window staring at a Christmas present I wanted desperately but would never get or even touch. It was dark and cold outside and snowing all around me, and there I stood in my rubber boots staring through the window at my unreachable prize, a tear running down my cheek. And then one day when I finally realized I’d never get what I wanted, I walked away into the cold darkness, knowing I’d miss him forever. He married her a year later.”

—Sandi, 24

2.

“What’s it like loving someone you could never have? It’s like being stabbed by an invisible knife again and again and again to where you don’t even feel you have the strength to breathe. To know that she had the kind of feelings for him that she’d never have for me made me wish the Earth would open up and swallow me whole. I’m in a relationship now, but it’s like I settled for a silver medal when I was going for the gold all along.”

—Tom, 27

3.

“What was it like? It was easy! I made myself up, fluttered my eyelashes, twirled my hair, spoke to him with a purr, and he fell for me like a ton of bricks. Yeah, like I said, that was the easy part. What made me want to kill myself was when he left me for another girl only three months later.”

—Angela, 27

4.

“Oh, damn, even thinking about it again I could cry. I fell completely blind, off-a-cliff, head-over-heels in love with him before I even knew his name. We worked together in the same office and the day he finally started talking to me I felt so high it was like I would float away into the clouds like a helium balloon. And then when he uttered the phrase ‘my girlfriend,’ that balloon popped and fell to Earth.”

—Tara, 29

5.

“It’s a slow form of torture. Even the word ‘torture’ might be too mild. I would rather walk over glass shards in bare feet than go through what I did emotionally when I learned that not only did he have a girlfriend, he was engaged to her. I think I ate three tons of ice cream in the first month after I learned that.”

—Jen, 30

6.

“Oh, so you want to know about ‘the one who got away,’ is that it? I guess in a way I was kind of a passive stalker. Nothing too crazy, nothing threatening, but I checked his Facebook and Instagram maybe ten times a day, vainly hoping that his relationship status would magically change from ‘In a Relationship’ to ‘Single’ one day. We went to the same college and were in a couple of the same classes, but to this day I don’t even know if he was aware of my existence. But every day after one of those classes, there she would be, waiting outside the classroom for him, ready to kiss him and walk away hand-in-hand. I’d run back to my dorm and either throw up or cry. Sometimes both. Really, thanks for asking, you asshole.”

—Brooke, 25

7.

“The best thing I can compare it to, as sick as it sounds, is like having some kind of fucked-up compulsion that you dare not ever act on because not only would it be wrong, the consequences would be too devastating. It’s like being a heroin addict, I guess, or even worse, someone with an illegal sexual compulsion. I just knew that if I ever approached him, he’d shoot me down and I’d never recover from it emotionally. So I never acted on my craving. I just keep it inside, bite my lip, and keep walking forward blindly. Really, it’s horrible. The worst. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really worse than being rejected, but I’m just not brave enough to ever try and find out.”

—Donna, 28

8.

“One word: nightmare. Only you eventually wake up from a nightmare. I don’t want to talk any more about it.”

—Mayumi, 21

9.

“It felt like being teased by the whole universe. Like all of creation had conspired to pull some sick high-school prank on me. It made me feel weak and foolish. Like a clown, really. A sad clown.”

—Anita, 20

10.

“I’m a pragmatic and impatient person. Friends told me to wait until she was single, but I didn’t. And she shot me down like a clay pigeon. So I went out, got drunk, and hooked up that night. No use curling up in a ball in the shower and crying. Like I said, I’m pragmatic.”

—Geoff, 26

11.

“Have you ever fallen in love with a TV star even though you know you’ll never get them and never even meet them and even if you did, they wouldn’t care enough about you to spit on you? Well, imagine that instead of a TV star, that’s your best friend and he’s deeply in love with a dumb girl who’s far prettier than you. And what cuts the deepest, he has no clue how you feel about him. TV is safe, though, and it’s not real. On the other hand, reality hurts like hell.”

—Sally, 19