I have been here before, and so have most of you. You can’t stop talking about them to your friends and family. You can’t stop thinking about them. You can’t stop obsessing over them. You can’t help but care about them in each and every way. You want to be with them all the time, always checking on their safety, always worrying if they’re okay. You’d sacrifice anything for them, you’d change jobs just to be with them. And when someone asks about it, you just say you’re deeply in love and would do anything for them.

But how do you really know if what you feel is love or something else?

Here’s the truth: the more obsessed you are with another person, the more it’s trying to escape itself. It’s quite counterintuitive and it feels like some deep love but that’s just being overly attached.

You might not actually love them; you might just love how they make you feel about yourself. They may be offering your identity some sense of safety, and because you feel deeply insecure, you elevate that safety into something sacred. You start to see your survival as heavily dependent on them.

When your wellbeing feels unbalanced, when you love someone so much that your life seems meaningless without them, when you feel like you wouldn’t survive or live a day if they left, what you’re feeling isn’t love. When their mood, approval, or emotional availability determine how okay you feel throughout the day, that’s not love either. That’s emotional dependence disguised as deep love.

I know it may feel so deep, and in some sense it is, because your unconscious believes it has finally found that safety after years of uncertainty. But that depth doesn’t come from love; it comes from fear.

A simple litmus test is how you feel in their absence. When they don’t pick up your call or text back, do you feel anxious or unloved? Do you spiral into thoughts that they’re losing interest, or that they’re with someone else or that they’re cheating on you? If that’s the case, you’re not love really, but you’re just overly attached. Don’t get me wrong, those thoughts will still be there even in a healthy kind of love. The difference is that when it’s healthy, they don’t carry as many unpleasant feelings as when you’re overly attached.

Another thing to understand is at first, that kind of attachment can feel intoxicating. It can give you those highs, some warmth, and a sense of belonging. But over time, you start losing yourself. The person you’re attached to becomes like a dopamine hit, and when that high fades, you crash into an abyss. It’s the same with any dependency: you keep chasing the feeling, not realizing it’s slowly emptying you out.

On the other hand, healthy love feels kind of different. It’s grounding and it elevates you without consuming you. It allows space for independence and supports your growth as an autonomous being. It doesn’t trap you in constant highs and lows. It begins with being deeply connected to yourself.

That connection is about noticing your attachment patterns and how they feed you false sense of security. True love doesn’t arise from fear of loss; it grows from wholeness. Healing means working through those old emotional patterns that keep your nervous system in constant alert around people who mirror your deep psychological wounds.

Once you break free from those outdated patterns, you realize your true nature is love. Not the kind you chase or cling to, but the kind that flows from within. When you’re truly in love, you don’t lose yourself; you find more of yourself. Love isn’t something you find; it’s something you have and once unlocked, you choose who to share with and how to express it.

But when you’re overly attached, you become confined and tethered to another person. But when you’re truly in love, you’re supported and free to be yourself with them. Love expands your freedom; it doesn’t limit it.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.

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