Do you remember a game we once used to play with daisies – “he loves me, he loves me not or she loves me, she loves me not…”? Plucking away one petal after the other, always hoping that the last petal would be the “he or she loves me”. If not, we usually started over until we achieve the desired result. Thinking about it, I suppose it was more a girls thing…

Is it even possible to LOVE TOO MUCH?

We always hear that there is not enough love around and that love is everything. We are told to be loving, even to love everyone.

But can LOVING TOO MUCH become addictive, unhealthy or even dangerous?

Definitely yes! I believe that there are different ways to LOVE TOO MUCH and you might have guessed that every single one of them is unhealthy or even toxic.

Let’s start with one of the worst ways of LOVING TOO MUCH, a love that is not real and can become not only unhealthy but downright dangerous for the recipient of this love. It is the kind of love where the person of interest knows nothing of being loved and does not reciprocate it in any way. We know this kind of love and LOVING TOO MUCH from fans of celebrities. Unfortunately, it is not limited to that. There are people, today they are called stalkers, who believe they are in some kind of relationship with the person they love, regardless of whether that person even knows that the stalker exists. This can also happen when a relationship was ended by one and the other is incapable of accepting this, going into absolute denial and believing that the relationship is still intact. If the stalker feels the love is not returned or the person of interest has another, a real relationship, this obsession can become potentially dangerous, as it can spiral into the opposite. I will not go into the ugly details of this though.

“Sometimes when you open up to people, you let the bad in with the good.” — Freddie Prinze Jr., She’s All That

Another form of LOVING TOO MUCH is when you believe that in a relationship two have to become one. A relationship as I see it should always be a give an take in some form.

• 

It should also be possible that the balance can and may change again and again depending on the situation. But there is often an imbalance in a relationship and that’s when it usually begins to become unhealthy. This often happens when one partner feels insecure or something has happened. Often it is the fear of losing the partner, the fear of being alone, losing financial security or social standing. Then you start to put your partner on a pedestal and do everything to please him or her. You start to push your own identity more and more into the background, walking on eggshells and doing everything for the other person. Often when his happens these people truly believe that they are doing this out of love, they start LOVING TOO MUCH or overcompensating. Unfortunately, the result is usually that the beloved partner takes this behaviour for granted or loses respect and, at some point, the love. This permanent imbalance in a relationship is toxic and someone who gives up their own identity for another person in order to please at all cost, will sooner or later resent this person, unless they did not have their own identity to begin with or have had a life long struggle with self worth.

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.” — Ernest Hemingway

I always made it quite clear that I do not really want to be in a relationship with someone who needs me. Don’t get me wrong, we all need others now and again and that is actually quite a good thing and I have said these words before myself. What I am talking about here is different though. I want a relationship with someone who WANTS me with all his heart but doesn’t need me to validate himself. Of course it can be nice to be needed but isn’t it so much better to be truly wanted. Often when someone LOVES TOO MUCH they tell you that they cannot live without you. Would it not be so much more pleasing to hear someone say that they do not WANT to live without you? As always I speak only for myself.

“When you tell me that you need me, I don’t feel loved but obliged to be your crutch.” – Unknown

And then again. love for me is what makes the world go round, what makes life worth living. It should perhaps just not be TOO MUCH or go into an unhealthy direction! As with so many things it is about balance and knowing when to hold on and when to let go. When you love, do it with passion and when you let go, do it with grace.

“I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No… not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening. but love that…overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.” — Viola, Shakespeare in Love

Wishing you a happy and wonderful weekend full of love.

Yours

Tanja

PS. I have started a newsletter and if you like what I write and would enjoy to have it in you email inbox regularly, I would be happy if you

SUBSCRIBE here

and share it with your friends.