Women Who Love Too Much

When Jill, a 29-year-old law student, met Randy, a handsome attorney, they clicked right away. Seven days later, he slept at her place, and they officially embarked on a long-distance love affair.

But by the end of that first week, problems were already starting to appear.

After their first passionate weekend together, Randy left Jill’s apartment and headed home. But even as he walked through his front door, his phone was ringing. It was Jill. Did he get back OK, she wanted to know – she had been worried about his long flight back. Soon, Jill couldn’t go one night without telephoning Randy. Even though they had an arrangement that they would take it in turns, Randy often failed to get in touch on his evenings. When this happened, Jill became restless, and before she knew it, she was calling him.

As their relationship continued, Jill worked overtime to try and get him to commit to her. Randy kept saying that if she continued to pressure him, he would walk away. But in Jill’s eyes, that just meant she needed to try harder. Soon she was playing the role of his therapist, helping him to figure out his feelings. Randy’s response? He kept saying he didn’t know what he wanted. Unfortunately, Jill couldn’t accept that. Convinced that she simply needed to make more of an effort to win his heart, she flew the long distance to his place to spend the weekend with him. And what did Randy do? He spent the whole time staring at the TV, getting drunk and ignoring her.

Unfortunately, Jill’s actions toward Randy are textbook examples of a woman who loves too much.

When we talk about women who love too much, what we really mean is that these women develop obsessive feelings for a man and then wrongly label that obsession as love. Women like Jill then allow their obsession to control their behavior and emotions. Just consider Jill’s compulsive nightly calls to Randy. Additionally, even when these women understand that their obsession is having a negative impact on their own emotional well-being, they still can’t let go. In other words, even though it hurt Jill to hear Randy repeatedly saying that he wasn’t sure what he wanted, and it hurt when he ignored her, she still couldn’t walk away from him.

Women like Jill – who was one of the author’s many anguished female clients – all have one thing in common: they equate feelings of love with feelings of pain, and they falsely believe that the more “love” hurts, the more genuine that love is.