That's funny, Father Steve. How did you refer to Ms. Gapesis, assuming you were struggling to escape the power of her gaze?

Let me give you all two paragraphs from the Preface to gain an understanding of the word I'm looking for.

This book is borne of my own experience of being unrequitedly in love. I say “unrequited” not because the man I loved didn’t love me back. He professed that he did. I use the word unrequited because he was unavailable to me. Whether the object of our love is unavailable--emotionally, legally or otherwise--or our love is unreturned, the end result is the same: love attachment to someone to whom, for the sake of our emotional health, we should not be connected. To provide brevity for the reader, let’s call the object of our love “the Beloved” and our own role as “the Lover.”

I tried everything to free myself: therapy, self-help books on ending love relationships, journaling, confronting the Beloved--you name it, I tried it. I became something of a lay expert on the subject! I longed to be, not in the opposite mindset of love--loathing or hate--but in the middle; that of indifference, or "out of love." I needed to help myself move on but I didn’t want to fill the space with anything less powerful or authentic than the love I felt. I needed to quiet my heart but maintain my capacity to love, both him (in a new way) and someone new. Being in love with someone we can’t have, or isn’t right for us, or who may be the right person at the wrong time, or for any other reason, requires dedication to freeing ourselves of love’s emotional bonds--bonds that often withstand the rigors of time and distance. Indeed, time stands still, and no geography is out of bounds, for those in love.

Suggestions?