Loving too much destroys us

When we talk about love, it seems that “more” is always synonymous with “better,” and believing this lie is like taking a poison pill disguised as candy. If we analyze the moments lived next to the person we love and the suffering wins by a landslide, something is not going well, we have become victims of what they call “love”.

Love is not suffering, it is not constantly sacrificing and always betting on the black. Loving is not being blind, it is not justifying even the unspeakable or forgiving any fact out of mercy. Loving is not depending, it is not developing an umbilical cord that chains you to your partner.

Love is not just a matter of quantity, but of quality. Loving is not overprotecting, it is not going behind solving all the problems that the other sows or protecting a child trapped in an adult body between cotton wool. And, of course, loving does not mean ending up physically or mentally torn; if our relationship harms our emotional balance and even, perhaps, our health and physical integrity, we are undoubtedly loving too much.

The masks in the couple

It seems that a great chasm between men and women separates the way of understanding and facing relationships. Cultural ideals, the education received, the family environment in which you grew up and even biology itself are strongly involved in this.

Childhood experiences with our reference figures and especially with our parents play a fundamental role in how we relate to others throughout our lives. Painful and difficult situations, emotional deficiencies, absence of important figures or lack of limits are just some of the factors that mark our way of seeking and giving affection.

On the one hand, Some women tend to handle love by developing a strong dependence or obsession with the other person. The torrent of emotions is experienced in a very intense way, it is expressed through the need for care and understanding towards the other, adopting the role of “saviors” on many occasions. So, it is quite ironic that women can respond with such compassion to others and remain blindfolded to the pain of their own lives.

Besides, many men escape their emotions through externalizing ways, that is, becoming obsessed with their work, using drugs or spending their free time on hobbies that leave little time for thinking. They tend to be emotional blocking strategies due to the inability to manage and understand them. Not facing discomfort or problems because they represent an unmanageable, overwhelming, embarrassing or blaming burden, which is better to avoid.

This type of behavior can occur in both men and women, But generally they are the ones who develop patterns of care and sacrifice as a way of seeking and offering affection, while men try to protect themselves and avoid pain through objectives that are more external than internal, more impersonal than personal.

When is it too much?

Many times we are not satisfied with a partner but we deny reality saying that it will only be a bad time. We justify the experience by thinking that this is how relationships are, passionate at the beginning and tortuous until the end.

We forgive the actions of others by convincing ourselves that they will change. Or maybe we don’t have enough courage to break off the relationship “for fear of hurting.” In reality, behind all this is our own fear of suffering, we are afraid of being alone or of not finding another person who can support us.

Who has not fallen in love at some point and the feeling has not been reciprocated? Or maybe you had great, intoxicating, mind-numbing sex but the rest of the relationship was an ordeal. Perhaps you have discovered yourself acting like a mother with your partner or you believe that without a person by your side nothing makes sense.

There are very diverse situations that we have been able to experience when we interact with other people, and therefore there are also many mistakes that we make and the forms of self-deception that we invent to soften the pain.

Maybe if we stop to analyze how we act when we are with someone and how our partners usually act with us, we can find pieces that are similar, chapters that are repeated over and over again even if the person is different. Couples come and go in our lives but we stumble over the same stones.

There comes a point where we are immersed in a vicious circle, which only repeats itself. We find ourselves unable to leave and we don’t even know how we got there. Again the same dramatic melody, the same bitter chords and even though the orchestra is different, the conductor is still you. Even if the person is different, even if the vital moment you are in is different, Although you promised yourself not to go through the same thing again, there you are again loving too much, and too badly.

Traces of the past

Why does this happen to us? The patterns that we learn at an early age to relate to others remain very fixed, We have been practicing them all our lives and abandoning or changing them is threatening and a terrible challenge. But it is more difficult to realize and be aware of the reality of the situation, to be able to see everything that is happening from within.

The key is to begin to understand ourselves, to ask ourselves why we incessantly look for someone to care for or protect, why our voice stops when we try to explain what we feel and we end up abandoning the task. Why I irrepressibly need to know what the other person is doing and control them when they are not with me, or why despite suffering we continue to maintain a relationship that is dead in life.

If our way of relating hurts us and hurts the person next to us, but we do nothing to understand and change it, life will not be a path to growth but a fight to survive. If loving is painful, it is time to love yourself to stop the pain.

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