Unrequited love: The role of prior commitment, motivation to remain friends, and friendship maintenance.

This study tested a moderated mediation model that commitment prior to an unrequited love episode will be related to higher levels of friendship maintenance behaviors after the episode and that this relationship will be mediated by the individual's motivations to remain friends with the rejecter. We predicted that rejection distress would weaken the mediational model among those reporting high distress. Participants wrote about an unrequited love experience as a pursuer and completed measures of pre-unrequited love commitment, rejection distress, motivations to remain friends, and friendship maintenance behaviors.