How to stop loving (too much) and start living 1
Chapter 1: What’s so bad about loving too much?
Loving too much is a common phenomenon. I am not alone, and you are not either. Many of us are obsessed with love, and we think it’s ok, we think it’s normal, because that is what love songs, movies, soap operas, novels, jewelry retailers, even hotels and restaurants tell us. Don’t think so? Just look at the amount of advertising you see around Valentine’s Day and Christmas. There are 6,870,000,000 results on Google if you search for the word “love”, compare that to “compassion” with 91,900,000 results and “kindness” with 119,000,000 results. We have become victims of a culture that celebrates romance and love in the form of romantic love only.
But the truth is, you can live, if living is without him/her.
We have become victims of a culture that celebrates romance and love in the form of romantic love only.
In “Women who love too much” — a book that broke me after the first two chapters and I could not continue reading until after some time because it made me feel so bad about myself, the author Robin Norwood mentioned that we are surrounded by a culture that romanticize, glorify and glamourize unrewarding and immature relationships, as if the depth of love can be measured by the pain it causes. This culture tells us that suffering is a natural part of love, and the willingness to suffer is a positive attribute.
On the other hand, being single is like a disease that so many people are afraid of. Not being with someone is seen as a failure. There are expectations from family members, friends, and society that you need to be with someone, as if being single means there’s something so inherently wrong with you, that it is disgusting and infectious. Being single is a sin.
The film “The Lobster” takes this absurdity to the extreme, where singletons are put into a “facility” and given a limited time to find a partner, during that time they can hunt other singletons in the “wild” to get extensions, but if they cannot find a partner when their time is up, they will be turned into animals.
There is nothing wrong with being in love. It’s amazing when it’s good, it gives you energy, it makes people glow. You can’t stop smiling when you’re thinking about your lover. It feels great to have that special connection, physical and emotional intimacy with someone that you don’t have with anyone else. But when love becomes an obsession and an addiction that consumes most of your life — that becomes a problem.
I am a victim of that. I can’t say I fall in love easily, but I get fascinated easily at the beginning of a relationship, I can stay up all night just to talk to that person, I think about that person all the time, so much that I can’t focus on other things I’m supposed to focus on. I want to be in touch with that person constantly, I’m always texting and sharing every cute cat video or funny cartoons I come across online, I send photos with everything I ate or every event I go to. I want to share everything with that person when we’re not together, and I want to be with that person all the time, sometimes as soon as a date is over. It’s crazy, it’s irrational, it’s completely head over heels. I think the world of that person, and I think maybe this person is the missing piece of my puzzle. I get so blinded by infatuation that I thought the butterflies in my stomach and the emotional high I get with this person must mean I’m in love, and I ignore or downplay his flaws or his problems.
In other words, I create a fictional perfect lover from an imperfect human being, and I dive in headfirst. I indulge myself in my obsession, and I live in a fantasy that I create in my head.
It’s all floating on cotton candy and riding on unicorns in the rainbow until things fall apart.
I overanalyze his messages when he texts. I get anxious when he doesn’t text. I worry that he’s not into me anymore when he’s out with female friends. I get jealous. I create the worst scenarios in my head, and I respond by texting more, trying to get his attention back to me. I become needy and insecure.
I thought the insecurities were normal in relationships, especially at the beginning. Well maybe it is for a lot of women, but it’s certainly not healthy and it does drive people away, unfortunately.
And the scariest part is that, I didn’t realize that until now.
The reasons he gave me for the break up was that he couldn’t deal with the long distance with everything else that was going on in his life. It didn’t seem like I have done anything wrong, on the surface.
I was in denial, probably still was as I was writing this. I refused to accept that the long distance was the only issue, I kept asking why? Why? WHY? And I kept looking for answers, and that’s when I stumbled upon attachment theory — in my opinion this should be made a mandatory class for high school, and teachers should tell students that this is probably the one class in their lives that they shouldn’t miss, if they want to have healthy relationships, or at least know themselves and the kind of mistakes they can avoid.
I tried to make sense of the situation by thinking that it’s not the circumstances but his psychological state, which he had no control over, and if it’s a psychological state, maybe it would be easier to change rather than the circumstances.
So what is the attachment theory and what are the different styles? Children learn to adopt different attachment styles as they grow up, and how they were raised by their parents have a significant impact on their styles. Children raised by parents who meet their emotional needs adequately adopt a secure attachment style, and those who have been raised without having their emotional needs met adopt an insecure attachment style. Among people who have an insecure attachment there are three types: anxious preoccupied, dismissive avoidant, and fearful avoidant.
It’s like learning to swim. The anxious preoccupied would dive in headfirst, thinking they would learn “on the job”. Fearful avoidants stand next to the pool, sticking one foot out but as soon as their toes touch the water, they’re scared, they think they cannot do it. Dismissive avoidants won’t even admit they’re scared so they would just say, “You know what? Swimming is a useless skill, I don’t need it!”
Over the years I thought I have learnt to swim in the pool, but when I came to this beautiful beach, I went straight into the open water, only to find myself lost and tired and scared, because I have never seen waves before in the pool! I almost got myself drowned, but I got myself together and managed to survive. Naturally, people who almost drowned would develop a fear. They wouldn’t want to attempt to swim again, it’s too scary, having been so close to death is debilitating. But does that mean it is not worth it? No, I don’t think so. You just need to learn how.
People who are anxious preoccupied, as you can tell from the name, are often anxious and preoccupied (that’s me), their insecurities cause them to hold on tighter, as they frantically try to pull their partners back with their attention and love. They are the brave ones in relationships; they are not afraid to crash and burn and would literally do anything to please their partners.
The anxious preoccupied has the need to be needed and a fear of not being needed, even with the wrong person. Being needed is the closest thing to love they have experienced. They have a low sense of self-worth and would blame themselves for not being perfect, while hoping that their partners would change. They take the blame and try to fix the unfixable. They are addicted to their partners because of their deep-rooted fears of abandonment.
The avoidants are the opposite, they are also insecure, but they respond by pushing back to avoid getting hurt. They take preemptive measures so they don’t have to face the fear of rejection and loss. Avoidants have difficulty expressing their true feelings, in fact, sometimes they are so out of touch with their feelings that they are not consciously aware of them, and they manifest in somatic symptoms like increased heart rate, loss of energy, and so on.
Dismissive avoidants have high self-esteem, so they often think that they don’t need relationships, and they are absolutely fine on their own. Of course there are people who genuinely do not want to be in relationships and are happily single, and sometimes it is quite impossible to tell whether they are being dismissive avoidant or just being themselves, they might not even know themselves because dismissive avoidants would not admit their underlying fears.
Fearful avoidants, on their other hand, have lower self-esteem, they want to be loved but at the same time, they are terrified of being abandoned, they long for intimacy but their deep feelings of unworthiness cause anxiety when things start getting “real” — when their partners start getting close to them, because they believe that they will eventually be hurt or abandoned, so they run away. They also tend to go for impossible relationships so it would eventually fulfill their own prophecies that it never works out in the end.
I was quite convinced that the French guy is a fearful avoidant, and I started studying that quite extensively. I read a book called “Avoidant”, I was focusing on his issues, but as I dived deeper and read more about the anxious preoccupied, I was more terrified because I realized that I am one of them. And these attachment styles seem so ingrained into a person that it made me feel quite hopeless.
But that’s not the worst part. I was more devastated when I looked at the stats. Only about 60% of people are securely attached, about 20% are anxious preoccupied and another 20% are avoidants. Many books and columns advise people with insecure attachments to just leave and go for people who are securely attached, I can’t help but think: it doesn’t work that way. Stephen Hawking’s first wife Jane Hawking didn’t leave him as soon as she found out that he had a motor neuron disease. As much as I’d like to, nobody can go around and ask prospective dates to complete an attachment style test before they go out with them. I can be 100% sure that I would never EVER have a date if I did that.
I felt like it’s over for me, I’m doomed. I gave up. It might be a scientific fact that anxious preoccupied people tend to bond with avoidants, but that sounds so impersonal, like we are all lab rats with predictable preferences and behavior. I happen to like creative, smart and sensitive people, because I’m sensitive too, and I find people who are too down-to-earth a bit boring, but the boring people are probably the ones who are securely attached. It seems like avoidants are unavoidable for me. It’s ridiculous to even think about changing my preference for men just because the ones I happen to like are probably avoidant. So many times I’ve said to myself, if that’s how it’s gonna be, I’d rather give up. And people have came to this conclusion before, upon discovering how men repress their emotions and are unable to show their true self because women and society expect them to be strong protectors without showing emotional weaknesses, this counselor concluded that men are just not worth her time.
A girl friend of mine who have been with avoidants like I did, said (and I quote), “Guys suck. They should all suck a dick and die.”
It might sound hilarious and dramatic but I am quite familiar with these feelings of disappointment and self-defeating thoughts. And I find myself asking this question over and over again, “Is love even worth it? All it brings is pain.”
But for me the answer is yes, it should not bring so much pain though. What’s not worth is being obsessed and always putting another person before you, thus not allowing yourself the joy of being content with yourself. It is one thing to choose carefully who you fall for, and it’s another to take a hard look at yourself and reflect — are you doing too much? Are you feeling “complete” as a person without anyone else? Most importantly, are you happy with who you are as a person, on your own and not with anyone else?
Are you feeling “complete” as a person without anyone else?
This said a person who was still stalking on Facebook and managed to read a book on “recovering” boyfriends in a day. Don’t judge me, I’m just human. I had this idea of flying over to France to talk to him face to face, it really sounded a bit crazy and delusional, but I hate giving up without even trying. I want to live with no regrets, and if that means I will fall flat on my face, so be it (preoccupied much?).
If I ever have a child, this would be the most important life lesson I’ll have to teach — you need to try and live with no regrets in life, even if you fail. Fear is everywhere, it is fine to be afraid, but don’t let fear stop you from going for what you want in life. You won’t earn anything if you don’t step out of your comfort zone. (At this rate I might be telling this to my mates in an old folks home instead, but oh well.)
It is fine to be afraid, but don’t let fear stop you from going for what you want in life.
There is one sport that I really like — dragon boating, it’s a team sport that involves 12–18 people paddling together in complete synchronisation. Apart from being a great team sport I think it is also a good training for the mind. When you are in a race you need to be 100% focused because you need to be in sync with the rest of the team, and you can’t stop even if you get hit by waves, you need to keep going to power through the waves, and you need to use your mind to overcome your own physical fatigue. You just have to keep paddling until you reach the finishing line, no matter what.
At the end of the races I evaluate myself by whether I gave my all, instead of the actual results. I would be equally happy to come last if I felt like my team and I gave it our all. Of course I still care about the results, but that is less important if I felt like I did my best. Maybe that’s why I have a strong will.
Now one might think, hang on a second, just a while ago you were saying that it’s not good to be loving too much, are you being schizophrenic or what? Hear me out. I believe there are things in life that are worth fighting for, however, there is no guaranteed success in anything, so whatever the outcome is, as long as we have tried our best, it shouldn’t matter as much.
Make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens — Epictetus
And now here’s the real contradiction, maybe it’s this mindset that is making me stuck in a constant loop of “Not working? Try harder” approach. That and being anxious preoccupied — we do tend to pull out all the stops in the hopes of making something work. When do we call it quits?
As a stoic philosopher would say, there are things you can control and things you cannot. You have little to no control over anything external — events that happen to you, circumstances, other people’s feelings and what they think. Things you can control are the ones that are internal — how you perceive events, your reactions, your feelings, and your thoughts. Do the best you can on what you can control, and surrender to what you cannot.
I think some people, when they get to this point, would probably say things like, “You are too obsessed with this guy, just let it go.” In fact, I would probably be the one saying this to a girl friend who told me the same story. I find it amusing sometimes because an outsider can be so objective and logical about certain situations, but when you’re at the eye of the storm, you really don’t care about what other people say.
When you love too much, you lose sight of what is happening around you, you become obsessed with one person and forget about everything else, your friends, your family, your career, and other things in life that matter to you. You forget about yourself, yes you do.
One day I went back to my blog to “remind” myself of how I was before I met this guy, and I was astonished to find this smart, confident woman that was once me. I like her. There was this A-ha moment when I was like, “OMG, that was me.” And that’s when I realized that it is important to stop “loving” too much and start living.
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