Have you found yourself thinking over and over about the person you are with, putting your own life second?
Have you found yourself in relationships that have brought you more negatives than positives?
Have met someone with so much potential and spent the following months/years trying to help them reach it?
Have you ever dated someone or are you dating someone who is emotionally unavailable, thinking if only you love them enough they will eventually fall in love with you endlessly (like you are with them)?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes and if you are ready for a healthy new you, then you must read “Women Who Love Too Much”.
“Women Who Love Too Much” by Robin Norwood
In this book the author shares her client’s stories to show the reader all the different form that unhealthy love can have and how to recover from entering a harmful relationship over and over again.
In truth, when I first read it years ago, I thought these stories were so extreme that this book couldn’t be helpful to me, however, in the new edition Norwood wrote a new preface in which she explains the ‘this-is-not-for-me’ (when yes-it-is) phenomenon.
It turns out that women, (but also men), who have found themselves in relationships where there is a lot of giving and no receiving, those who have been in abusive relationships or who can’t seem to find the ‘right person’ to love, are bound to think that these extreme examples are completely un-related to their own lives.
We tend to believe our situation is ‘less bad’ than others around us. We think we are in control. We believe that our stories are or were a lot less harmful than the ones in the book when in fact, the psychological concepts at the core of them are very similar.
Fast-forward 15 years and I finally understood what this book is about and why every woman who has found herself in a dysfunctional relationship should add this to their ‘must read’ book list.
You don’t need to wait for massive trauma to read it, it’s helpful even to become aware and to modify toxic behavior no matter how big or small it is.
Should You read this book?
- If you are a giver and single, there is a takeaway for us somewhere in this book.
- If you have experienced an anxiety-filled relationship in the past, there is a takeaway for you in this book.
- If you are in a relationship right now and even 1% of you feels like something is not quite right, there is a takeaway for you in this book.
- If you have experienced or are experiencing physical or psychological abuse, there is a takeaway for your in this book.
- If all you can think about is the other person, there is a takeaway for your in this book.
- If you feel or have ever felt like you love too much, this is the book for you.
This book is for women who confuse pain and anxiety for love and sexual chemistry.
This book is for women who are ready to close this endless cycle of crap and begin a new journey towards healing, towards healthy relationships, towards a happier life.
How to know if it’s love or addiction
Wikipedia defines addiction as:
A neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in certain behaviors, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use often alters brain function in ways that perpetuate craving, and weakens self-control.
I cannot effectively sum up all of the incredibly complex ways in which we can fall into addiction, you need to actually read the book, however I learned that they are mainly triggered from our incapability of dealing with our own emotions. When we don’t learn in childhood how to manage our emotions effectively, we tend to compensate with addictive patterns.
The bottom line is: through addiction, we are able to escape reality.
By focusing on the other person, we are effectively escaping our own reality. We try to control emotions, to control the future, in the hopes that we can take back the reins of the situation.
If our partner is an addict, we become co-addicts, surfing the waves of uncertainty alongside them. We begin to crave the ups and downs which keep us far away from focusing on ourselves. We think it’s a selfless pattern, but it’s not. We are getting our fix.
Love can be an addiction. The book teaches us that when it’s addiction, it probably wasn’t love in the first place.
Recovery
The good news is that we can all recover from Love addiction.
By ‘loving too much’, we try to control the other person. I know what you’re thinking: I’m not trying to control him. I thought I wasn’t either, so hear me out.
To NOT control means not helping and not giving advice. You have to trust that the other person has the skills and the strength to pull themselves back up. You have to learn to do and say nothing.
As long as we focus on fixing someone else, we are unable to use our energies to help ourselves. It’s easier to focus on someone else rather than facing our own lives however it’s a bit like when you do admin: you see it as a huge annoying mountain of stuff but once it’s done, you feel so much lighter and the effort was so much less than you had anticipated.
Why do we feel this tendency to control?
By controlling the other person we are trying to control our own feelings of anger, resentment, anxiety or whichever emotion we are feeling at that specific time. Typically women who love too much have unhealthy relationships with their bodies and will incur in patterns such as overeating, over-exercising or similar tools.
Let me attach two pages from the book with explain more about control:
Read this book, it will be a great first step towards healing
What a learning journey it has been to dive into these pages. A few key points for all of us to remember:
- Go to therapy, put in that work on yourself, it’s always worth it
- Get a support group, it has the power to help you heal and not only from your own mistakes, but from others as well. You will feel less alone in this long journey.
- Spend time with yourself, learn to be a bit more selfish. Don’t go to that event you don’t wan to go to as a good samaritan. No one ows you recognition for it, it is probably just a way for you to manipulate someone into loving you more. Watch our for signs of addiction.
- Connect with this very moment you are in right here, right now.
As always, change begins with awareness and awareness begins with a journey of self exploration, with honesty, with the support of those around us, professionals and trusted friends. Recovery takes time, but we can all get there.
Is it love, or is it addiction? Now you have the tools to know, the tools to take back the reins of your own life.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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