“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Let me tell you a little story about my visit to the mountains of Turkey many years ago.
I met this beautiful, intelligent girl from Turkey, with crazy dark curly hair. We had this great relationship going, and one day she asked me if I would like to learn her origins and travel to Turkey with her.
I said “of course,” and the next thing I know I was on sitting on an airplane on my way to Anatolia, (the mountain region of Turkey).
Over the next few days, she showed me her beautiful country, full of friendly people and breathtaking scenery.
We were on a mountain trip looking for her hometown when she suddenly asked me:
“How do you like my village?”
“What village?” I asked. “You mean the three cabins over there?”
“Yes, kind of ” she replied, “this is where my parents grew up. My origins are right over there” .
We went to visit her grandparents.
They were living in a very small house, which decayed from the outside, but was surprisingly comfortable and well furnished on the inside. Not to our Western standards, of course, but adequate and pleasant.
Her grandparents were very nice, but somewhat scary people.
Do you know the type of seniors, who seem to be able to look you in the eye and know everything about you?
What you are thinking, what you've done, what you will do?
All of the world’s wisdom seemed to lie in them.
Especially her grandpa, with his white beard and stabbing blue eyes, as if he had jumped out of a fantasy movie.
Scary.
And I was sitting in front of them as the boyfriend of their loving grandchild.
After some meaningless chitchat, where no more than “yes” or “no” left my lips, her grandpa said something that I will never forget my whole life.
They seemed to have noticed that we were very in love – it was written all over us.
He said with a meaningful attitude and very earnest, if not threatening:
“Pay attention that you do not love too much. It's never good to love someone too much” .
Then he stood up, walked to his grandchild, kissed her gently and left the room, without looking at me once.
Needless to say, I was quite shocked.
“What did he mean by that?” I asked my girlfriend later.
“You have to find out by yourself” , she replied. “My grandpa says mysterious things all the time. People are coming to him and asking for his advice all over the country. When he says something like this, it always has some meaning.”
Never love too much.It didn't make sense to me.
To love someone was, for me, the ultimate altruistic gift you could possibly give.
I desperately wanted to do that, to love someone until madness. It was my personal goal.
The Turkish girl and I broke up months after that for various reasons, to my regret, but I never stopped thinking about this strange event that happened in the mountains of Turkey.
A few years later I would find out the meaning of this sentence, and what it meant to me, in the most painful way.
After that devastating breakup I experienced, I suddenly realized why it is bad to have loved TOO MUCH, and it made perfect sense to me.
It's bad because I lost myself completely.
I lived through the other person, defined my happiness by the other person, and connected all my future and past to her.
That is loving TOO MUCH.
Every time you find yourself disconnected from the person you really are because of the relationship, then you love too much, and it WILL lead to disaster.
Of course, I do NOT mean that you shouldn't give all the love you have, you definitely shouldn't hold anything back, but don't lose the person you are over it.
This is MY personal truth and interpretation of that mysterious phrase I heard so many years ago.
Do you think that it's possible to love too much, until madness? I'd love to read your opinion in the comment section.
Your friend,
Eddie Corbano
Eddie its true but in my case its not true…Bcoz according to my point of view Love some one so much that God personally say that what a kind of love it is….He should be jealous upon u…..Love someone so much that he/she thinks 100 times before they leave u…
I will be going through a divorce soon. And i believe that it all started with ny love madness with my husband of 6 1/2 years. I became obssessed with him that my whole life centered around him. And I expected him to be the same. Unfortunately I was disappointed because I was not his priority but his family (parents and sisters. Because of this I did stupid things and he held that against me. Few years after, our relationship has gone downhill. We both dont want to be in it anymore.
Yes I do believe this, I fell so in love with my recent ex that I completely forgot the person I was and if I’m honest I resented her for that. We had a turbulent 2 year relationship and I can’t say she always treated me as I wish to be treated but I don’t regret anything for a moment.
I tried to explain to her what I was feeling and that I needed to take a little of myself back so that I could be the man she wanted me to be but it led to her just getting offended and began the road to what inevitably was the end of us.
I now realise I can’t make this mistake ever again and that every person who falls in love with someone else should retain their identity and remain the person that the other fell in love with.
Hi Eddie,
This article is so true! I have loved my ex so much that he became the center of my life, that he became my only source of happiness. And because of that, I became clingy, dependent, insecure as time goes on, because I was afraid to lose him, who I considered my life. Every decision, plan, and dreams for myself is based solely on him. I’ve forgotten my studies, my friends, and my family. And when he dumped me, I made the mistake to kill myself. Thank God that He never abandoned me. I’m still alive, building my life again from scratch. And because of NC and your teachings, I’m doing great, I realized that he does not deserve every bit of me. You are absolutely right. Thank you for everything Eddie. Please continue helping other people. God bless you. 🙂
On Nov. 1, 2012…I called my girlfriend to say I missed her and if I could come over, next thing I know, she says it’s over…over the phone…I didn’t know what hit me. We had been dating for almost 8 years,
A year after we started dating, she broke up with me, only for me to find out she had another person on the wing….when things didn’t work out, she came back 6 weeks later and to be honest, I was grateful top have her back.
The next five years, we had our ups and downs but I thought we were a solid couple. Then in the beginning of 2012, it started as a rough year and ended even worse. She hit on someone I worked with, which I told her upset me, she didn’t seem to understand why I got upset…??? Then she broke up with me in May 2012 out of the blue. Once again after 6 weeks (yes she was with someone else during that time), she came back again but with a list of 12 things I needed to change about me in order for things to work between us. I did the best I could but I knew I was in trouble…who can live up to a list? So by the time Nov. 1st came around, I was devastated but I guess not totally surprised.
I helped her pay for her school loan, credit cards, bought her a car (used but it was a car) and other expenses throughout the years. I didn’t mind since I thought all couples shared expenses. After the break up, she said that she never forced me to pay for her stuff, but she didn’t reject it either. 3 weeks after our break up, she was already seeing someone else, who’s a bit younger and richer then me. I forgot to mention, she ended that break up phone call by saying “that she hadn’t love me for the last 5 years”….???!!! wow….
This article has hit me like a bomb, I didn’t know there was an actual thing…..about loving someone too much…I thought it was just me…for the last 3 and half months, I have been eating my heart out wondering if there was something wrong with me feeling so much love for her.
I have my house for sale and trying to move on but with the economy and housing market, I have to basically wait it out.
The grandfather in this story could not have said a more truer comment….DO NOT love someone too much, there is such a thing and it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Thank you Sonni for sharing your story!
My God, I can totally relate to this article. My boyfriend broke up with me a month ago because he felt that he had no freedom, I was always there even during those times when he needed space. Most of the time, when we love too much, we depend on that person for happiness day in and day out. I was incomplete every moment I was not with him, thus, resulted to me being clingy and expecting too much from him. I learned that it is really not good to put too much on the plate because you will expect that he/she will do the same for you. You will exert 150% of your time,energy, care and love with 50% chance of spending forever with him, and 50% of losing him/her along the way. What if your situation falls in the second? You will lose not only 100% of your strength, you will still have to carry the impact of the heartbreak for 50 more percent until nothing has been left for yourself. Just like a phone, if you drain its battery, there will be a longer charging time until it’s full again. There might be a lag before you can open it again and become useful. Unlike if you use up only about 80-90% of your full energy and that power outlet (meaning your bf or gf) is nowhere in sight, you will survive using what’s left of your energy until the “right” power outlet, which will be willing to sustain you for a lifetime, comes along.
I know that it is possible to love too much. I believe that is exactly what it is that I am doing in my current relationship. One that I know will never workout. I don’t seem to be able to let go. Our chemistry in bed is amazing, but there is something missing. My best friend says that he is not the one but I do what I wish as I am not seeing it. I do see it but I am not sure how to let go without a hard flat out end to the relationship. My sexual chemistry with him is confusing my emotional self. I have noticed that I am starting to make room for him and not attending to my personal needs and wants. I am in trouble.
Yes it is definitely possible to love too much. My ex-boyfriend and I were together over 2 years. We talked about marriage and kids and lived through each other but I completely lost who I was. Before we dated I was all about my friends and never sat home for 1 night. He was the guy I had loved all through high school and when I got my chance to be with him I took it.. little did I know that I would throw away everything for him. I blew off my friends and lied to them because I knew they would be upset if they knew I was with him. He didn’t like my friends and my friends didn’t like him. I wouldn’t believe anything bad that they told me about him and gave him everything I had. Soon I realized, when my friends would stop calling, that I had started to lose everything. When my boyfriend went on vacation and I had a chance to spend time with my friends I realized what I had done. I broke it off right away and blamed it on him for pulling me away from my friends because I was looking at any reason to get out. I was truly as deeply in love with him as it is possible to be with one person and will always wonder if I made the right choice, but I have found myself again and regained the friendships that I regretfully threw away at one point in time. It is definitely possible to love until madness.
i find it quite interesting that this story is so similar to my own love story. When i was in High School I also met a turkish guy and we fell in love. It was great while it lasted, i had never met somebody like him and i loved him soooooooooo much that i can't even explain. Unfortunately i loved him too much and when our relationship ended i lost myself. I went through depression and just couldn't get my life back. Sadly until today i can't say that i have completely forgotten about him 🙁
I absolutely think it's possible to love too much until madness. I have always had a big heart and always dreamed of one day finding somebody to give all that love I had to. At 20, I dated my first boyfriend and we dated for about 2 and a half years. I fell so completely in love with him. Not because he was the perfect guy for me (he really wasn't…) but because I felt like I found somebody to give away all that love that I had. I have always been a very independent girl and I never expected myself to get to the point of “love” and “madness” that I did with my ex. But, as they say, love makes you do crazy things. I lost myself in him. Everything was about him. I dedicated all my time and energy to him. I would cancel activities with friends, stay out late when I had work the next morning-all to be with him. I spent so much money on him. Doing those things for him made ME happy though. At the end of our relationship, I could clearly see that I loved him more than he loved me. The things I was willing to do for him went far beyond what he was willing to do for me. It was almost a one way street with our relationship. I lost it when we broke up. I felt like my world came to an end because I became dependent on him to make me happy. I wish I hadn't lost myself in the relationship like I did. I believe had I not loved too much, I would have been able to cope easier. There is nothing wrong with loving, but never forget yourself in the process. There IS a world outside of your significant other. In my next relationship, I now know how to and how to not act. Ever life experience is a blessing in disguise. It makes you the person you are and helps you to make better decisions.
Hey ppl! Everyone here is talking just about someone whom he has lost! About someone whom s/he used to love!!! Why ppl realize how much they loved only after hey lose their partner??? Nobody writes how mad s/he is in love now!!! That is what ppl should try to do! To feel all the love deep inside when they through it and not when they brake up! I came p with this articles because I want to keep my love so big and forver now, when I have it! And hope I will not use it! Just think like this and then maybe less suffer will be 😉
i believe we do love to much, I am madly deeply in love with someone now and have been for 8 years, I know he feels to same but it scares him. He said he loves me then threw it back in my face by saying he using me.. almost to justify himself and his feelings.
I hope we don’t break up after all this time, as they say time will tell.
You learn by loving and giving, sometimes we meet people throughout our journey in life, that have learned these lessons,you were able to hear the the words, embeded them in your mind, a diaster waiting to happen,months later it did, any message when well received can be learned from someone who has treaded down the same path, to shed light on your own personal love disaster, we can only know and learn these lessons on our own,trust and do anything in life with all your heart,
but it is always better if he/she loves you more…
What about obsession and controlling relationships? This site is too useful but it seems it's just about “average” break ups. Some of us have had to literally “run away” from a freaky partner…..
Absolutely!! And only can say this now due to my recent break-up. We were very much in love, or so I thought. The sex and Intimacy were out of this world off the charts. Which blinded me to her insecurities and Jealousy. I mistook her jealousy and loving attention. This relationship was 2 years long as we both were separated from our souses at the time, Once my divorce was finial she forbid me to talk to my Ex. My Ex and I have 2 children, and are doing our best to Co-Parent. This is imposable with out communication. This was finally not the red flag I should have seen earlier but a huge red beacon flashing at me. I can now look back and honestly admit to Loving her too much and allowing myself to not be treated with the respect we all deserve. I definitely was no longer my self in the final 8 months of that relationship. I certainly miss the great times we had, but it is very clear to me that was not the right person for me and HOPEFULLY learned a valuable lesson. Always; “To thine own self be true!”