Can You Love Too Much In A Relationship?

If you’re asking yourself, “can you love too much,” allow me to explain why you most certainly can.

This article is for those who find themselves falling head over heels in love with their romantic partner.

Loving too much in a relationship

Loving too much

Everyone enters a relationship for the sake of reaping the benefits of the relationship. In a nutshell, a relationship should be both about loving the other person and loving yourself.

Without the proper balance of investing in the other person—as well as into your own life, your romantic relationship could face difficulties.

Just how being selfish and self-centered can damage a relationship, so can being too loving. Here is an exaggerated example of what you should not do when you are in a committed relationship.

During work, you text your girlfriend all the time. You hold a conversation for hours at a time without giving her the room to breathe.

When she doesn’t reply fast enough, you question her where she went and what she was doing. Even though she gave you no reason to doubt her, you begin to question her and regularly ask her if she loves you as much as you love her.

You ask her this question multiple times and expect reassurance in return.

can you love too much

While some people may think this is loving and caring, it’s coming off as needy and unattractive. It screams of incredibly low self-esteem and untrustworthiness.

Smothering your partner with love and affection is off-putting, and very repelling. Such behavior puts him or her on the pedestal. Your partner doesn’t want to be looked at as an almighty being. He or she wishes to feel equal.

Nobody wants to feel like they are worth more than their significant other. When one thinks that way, he or she now holds all the power.

A smothered person could make his significant other do literally anything with a snap of the fingers.

Can you love too much?

You can definitely love your significant other too much. It happens more often than you think.

Sometimes a romantic partner begins to feel a lack of investment from the other person, so he thinks the best way to make the other person give more is by investing more himself.

With that ideology, he invests and invests and invests, but unfortunately, all for nothing. Weeks or months in, this emotionally drained individual feels as if his partner has not only invested even less, but he doesn’t even care as much about the relationship anymore.

Can you love too much in a relationship

The relationship used to be 50/50, it turned into a 75-25, and now it’s become a 90/10. Why is it getting worse instead of better, you ask? It’s simple.

When you invest your time, energy and emotions into another person, you divest yourself of love and care you deserve.

By strongly focusing on this other person, you make it your life’s mission to serve and protect as if he or she were your baby. Because you give him everything, he doesn’t feel the need to return the effort.

Hypothetically speaking, you and your friend want to set up a tent for a weekend getaway. You are absolutely certain that your friend can get the job done himself, and will do so with or without your help. Knowing this, you want to help, but feel less inclined to do so, because you don’t need to.

It’s being taken care of, whether you help or not. You know that the person helping you is not even going to complain about it. He might be exhausted, but he will recover shortly. You think to yourself that you have been feeling pretty drained lately, so you’re just going to sit this one out. Perhaps you will help him another time.

Anyway, the point is that people don’t always appreciate hard workers.

People are selfish beings, so they will always make sure they are full of vigor and completely content first.

There’s nothing wrong with making sure you stay healthy, but when it comes to relationships, it has to remain as close to 50/50 as possible. Any form of overinvestment does more harm than good.

Nobody deserves more than what he or she is able to give. That includes your girlfriend, your ex or your friend.

What does it mean when you love too much?

When you give your partner more attention than he deserves, it tells your lover you care more about him than you do about yourself. Although it may seem like a selfless act, it ends up repelling him more than it attracts.

At first, it appears adorable and caring. Over time it turns into neediness and desperation. When you put him on a pedestal for weeks or months, you inadvertently kill the attraction. Without having your own life to look forward to, and making your boyfriend’s a priority, it makes him want to do less.

Being the top of your boyfriend’s world when he doesn’t reciprocate your hard work, is, in my opinion, a huge mismatch.

The truth of the matter is that once a person stops appreciating your efforts, he stops to care about you and your well-being. And once he doesn’t care, he can make his exit out of the relationship a cake-walk.

When you are naturally inclined to give a lot, it requires a lot of soul-searching and self-control to balance it out.

The best way to stop yourself from overinvesting in your partner’s life is by focusing strongly on yours. Incorporating new activities and making new friends is the way to start.

On the other hand, when a person is in a relationship to take more, it’s nearly impossible to tell him to put more into it. That’s because he doesn’t feel the need to try harder, so it’s incredibly difficult to convince him.

Can you love too much by loving yourself

Loving too much, in theory, doesn’t oppose a problem. In reality, it sets the foundation for the grass is greener syndrome to occur as GIGS develops from taking another person for granted.

Can you love like hell and make it work?

Under the condition that your partner loves you back like crazy and puts his best foot forward non-stop, it can work wonderfully.

If two people enter a relationship with the purpose to give first and receive second, it can turn into a wonderful relationship. Both can live to please each other, by always wanting to give the very best they have.

Rarely have I come across relationships, where both partners would invest great amounts of effort from the beginning to the end.

These relationships are extremely fragile, as even the slightest disruption to the relationship can throw them off course.

Normally one of the partners gets overwhelmed with anxiety from outside of the relationship. More common relationship breakers are deaths/illness in the family, stressful/changing jobs, children.

Do you agree with what I wrote in this article? Can you love too much? I’d like to read your comment below.

7 thoughts on “Can You Love Too Much In A Relationship?”

  1. Hi Zan – I definitely did this in retrospect. I’ve been in no contact for a month. Will this help my ex avoid the GIGS syndrome if I keep going? Your blogs have been amazing.

    Thanks Paul.

    Reply
  2. OMG Zan, that explains my last breakup! The last piece that missed in the puzzle in my head. This article is a life changer ! Thank you

    Reply
  3. Hi Zan, could you expand on the last paragraph: “Normally one of the partners gets overwhelmed with anxiety from outside of the relationship. More common relationship breakers are deaths/illness in the family, stressful/changing jobs, children.”

    Are you referring to relationships where both partners would invest great amounts of effort from the beginning to the end? Where an example of “the slightest disruption to the relationship that can throw them off course” are these anxiety from the outside? Why does loving like hell not work in this case, I would think the partner under these anxiety would require more love, however i do admit that the partner under these anxiety would not be able to reciprocate. Also why do they commonly lead to breakups?

    In my case, my ex and i started facing problems when there was an illness in his family, and we both have stressful jobs. And the start of the relationship he used to be the one “loving too much” but in the later part, it became me doing the “loving too much”. I would like to understand how loving too much may be detrimental when there are anxiety from the outside

    Reply
  4. Hi Zan!

    Can you please give more details about what you’ve mentioned in this article “loving too much precedes GIGS”

    Thank you so much!

    Reply
    • Hi B.

      I would love to explain further.

      Loving a person too much – so much that you love yourself less can cause GIGS to occur. It can make your partner respect you less because you don’t respect yourself enough.

      When you dedicate most of your time, love, and attention to the person you love, you essentially neglect your own wants, needs, and life. And that’s something people often take for granted. They don’t find it attractive, so they eventually start thinking that they can do better and consequently leave their partner.

      That partner (the dumpee) then suffers from codependency.

      I hope this makes sense.

      Kind regards,
      Zan

      Reply
      • I don’t quite understand, Zan. I would have given my life for my ex. That doesn’ t mean I don’t respect myself.

        How could anyone think less of someone who’s able to sacrifice themselves for others??

        Reply

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