Loving too Much: The Silent (& Seductive) Relationship Killer

By Joanna Shakti / Heartache and Barriers to Love /

Loving too much has the power as well as the probability to destroy a relationship. Yet, the habit of loving someone too much can feel so compelling, so seductive, so seemingly positive that you might not recognize it until significant damage has been done. On the good side, we can recover from its effects and change the patterns. Whether you’re in a relationship or mending from another breakup, changing this habit will take some time and patience on your part, as well as that of your partner, if you have one.

Most struggle to begin this shift because the idea that you could actually over care seems illogical and ridiculous to the mind. “How could you possibly love someone too much?” it says.

So let’s begin the process of learning how to stop loving too much by clearly understanding its seductive nature, and how it can pull you back into its damaging effects when you’re not conscious.

Why loving too much is unhealthy and so seductive

Part of its complexity and power is that loving too much can be seductive for both people, at least in the beginning.

If you’re the one with this habit, it’s seductive for you because the need to show how loving you are can actually become addictive. When you show what appears to be incredible compassion, attention, and generosity, and the other person responds by taking in that love — maybe even offering it back to you — you get a hit of feeling, “Yes! I’m good. They love me.” With that hit, you relax for a moment, but then you’re compelled to do more. You look for the next way to say “I love you” in your words and actions. And, the cycle repeats itself over and over with you doing and giving more and more.

This attempt to love so much is unhealthy because, unconsciously, it’s driven by an underlying insecurity that motivates someone to prove how good and worthy of love they are. Every time the receiving person responds favorably, the insecurity is soothed and, again, it feeds the idea within you that “I’m good, I’m lovable.” Yet it is only the doubt that you are not lovable, that has you care too much.

On the flip side, if your partner is the one with this habit, you can initially be seduced by the attentiveness, kindness, and support you receive. It can feel good to have someone paying that much attention to you. Of course it’s nice when someone does things for you. It’s easy to be drawn to someone who sees you and cares for you, especially when you’re not used to that. Until it doesn’t.

Until you want to start pulling away and you’re not even sure why. Until they don’t seem as wonderful as they once did.

Often neither person in the relationship consciously understands what’s happening. It’s just that something is off. Silently and seductively the possibility of true and sustained love erodes.

How do I know if I am loving someone too much in a relationship?

Since this pattern can be so elusive and hard to recognize, let’s first look at some of the signs of loving too much in the person with the habit. Then we’ll consider the feelings and the experiences their partner might have.

15 signs that you might be loving someone too much:

You get anxious when they pull away or need time to themselves.
You chase them when they seek that time and space.
You don’t really trust the love the other person brings to you.
You are frequently at the bottom of the priority list.
If you’ve had this habit for a long time, you likely feel resentment.
Similarly, you feel unappreciated and unsupported.
It’s hard to remember what makes you happy or what your dreams are.
You’re always paying attention to how to be an even better partner.
You’re more attuned to your partner’s emotions than your own.
You don’t really know the difference between healthy and unhealthy boundaries.
You question your worthiness or lovability even though you give soooo much.
You can be “mothering” about someone’s needs.
You look for any way to be together. You always want to do things together.
You have people pleasing tendencies.
You frequently ignore your own needs, wants and desires, or in other words you practice self-abandonment.

If your partner is loving too much, you might feel like…

I can’t breathe.
I’m being smothered.
I don’t need another mother.
I can’t get any time to myself. I need time to myself.
I wish he/she/they were more secure in themselves.
It seems like no matter how much I love them, it’s never enough.
You’re confused because you sometimes feel manipulated, but don’t understand why, since they are just trying to love you.
You feel less loving than you think you should toward your partner.

There are no long term advantages to this approach to relationship, and, as you can see, the disadvantages of loving someone too much stack up rapidly. You can’t act too quickly to change this. The sooner you address the habit, patterns, and accompanying insecurities, the sooner the sabotage stops and the faster you can both come to know true love.

How to stop loving too much

If you are the one who wants to shift this pattern, the real changes have to come from within you. Your partner, if you have one, will need to have patience and compassion. They will also need to explore forgiveness and the need to rebuild trust. Yes, it is actually hard to trust someone who loves too much.

If you really want to shift this pattern, then it’s important to be honest about its source; and this is not always easy to hear. As a matter of fact one of the last things you might want to see or admit about yourself is the manipulative and controlling aspects of this pattern. Yet, again, if we are being honest, that is exactly what is happening.

The over abundance of loving actions are offered and done in an unconscious attempt to secure the love so desperately wanted. You are not alone in this. It is true for every person with this pattern. As we said above, the actions are driven by a part of you that seeks to know you’re ok and you are loved.

With that, the internal hope that drives the external pattern is that If you can show the other person how loving you are, then they will love you back and they won’t leave. You hope that through your generous actions, you’ll finally be able to trust that you’re enough, that you’re worthy, that you’re worth loving.

But, as you likely know, it never works. No matter how much you love, you don’t really feel loved in return, yet you’re compelled to love more, Then, unfortunately, over time, they pull away more and more. In turn, you feel more afraid, less lovable, so you try to do more. Then eventually the whole dysfunctional pattern collapses along with the relationship. Unless… Unless you stop trying to get the love from them and start finding it within yourself.

Loving too much ends when you stop trying to get love from them and start finding it within yourself.
~Joanna Shakti

Your relationship with you is the antidote

When we are secure in ourselves there is no need to prove our lovability. There is no need to over give. There is no need to control or manage anything about the relationship because you know that true love happens as it’s meant to. You know there is nothing you need to do to get or keep love.

When you love yourself you don’t need another to love you. The love of another is, of course, wonderful, but you no longer depend on it for your wholeness or security. Therefore it can flourish brilliantly and profoundly.

The antidote to loving too much is simply to learn how to love yourself. Period.

Loving too much happens because someone wants to find the love outside themselves that they can’t find within. When you turn within and find the truth of your own lovability, value, and greatness, you will also find what we call Ecstatic Authenticity. Through that genuine and joyful realness, rooted in love itself, you’ll finally be able to trust love. That trust of your own innate goodness combined with a new trust of love itself, will open you to the possibility for Ecstatic Intimacy, or as we call it, soul-to-soul love.

Since 2006, highly conscious men and women, with a commitment to extraordinary relationships, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate Soul Partnerships from their bedrooms to their boardrooms. Ecstatic Intimacy believes in coveted relationships, for all.

You too, are invited…

*At Ecstatic Intimacy, an all-inclusive website for singles and couples, we welcome all sexual orientation(s), gender(s) and relationship expressions. In this article we utilize the pronouns he/she/him/her.