Girls who love too much robin norwood. Women who love too much

Women who love too much

When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He,ll Change

Foreword

We love too much if "love" means "suffering" to us. We love too much if most conversations with close friends revolve around him, his problems, his thoughts, his feelings and almost all of our phrases begin with the word "he".

We love too much if we justify his bad temper, indifference or rudeness with a difficult childhood and try to take on the role of a psychotherapist.

We love too much if, while reading a guide like "How to Help Yourself", we note all the things that we think can help him.

We love too much if we do not like many of his character traits, values and actions, but we put up with them and think: more attractiveness and love - and he will want to change for us.

We love too much if the love endangers our emotional well-being and perhaps our health and safety.

Despite all the suffering and disappointment, for many women, too much love is such a common condition that we are almost sure that close relationships should be just that. Most of us have loved too much at least once in our lives, and for many, this has become a familiar state. Some of us are so obsessed with our lovers and our love that we have little energy for anything else.

In this book, we will try to understand why many women, looking for a man who would love them, inevitably find a partner who does not love them and is generally completely unbearable. We will see that love becomes too strong when our partner does not suit us, does not appreciate us, or does not pay attention to us, and yet we not only cannot part with him, but, on the contrary, the attraction and attachment to him only intensifies. We will understand why our desire and need to love, our love itself, turns into addiction.

Addiction is a terrible word. It conjures up images of heroin victims plunging needles into their veins and clearly on their way to suicide. We do not like this word, we do not want to use it in relation to our relationships with men. But very, very many of us have been victims of love, and like other victims of addiction, we must acknowledge the seriousness of this disease in order to embark on the path of recovery.

If you have ever had to obsess over a man, then perhaps you suspected that the root of this passion is not love, but fear. If love borders on obsession, we are tormented by fear: the fear of being alone, of being unloved and unworthy, the fear that they will lose interest in us, abandon us or destroy us. We give our love, desperately hoping that the man we are obsessed with will allay our fears. But instead, fears, and with them our obsession, deepen, until the habit of giving love in order to receive it in return becomes the driving force of life. And because our strategy doesn't work, we try our best and love even more passionately. We love too much.

For the first time I realized that the phenomenon of "too strong love”is a special syndrome of thoughts, feelings and actions, after working with alcoholics and drug addicts for several years. After conducting hundreds of conversations with victims of alcohol and drug addiction and their loved ones, I made a surprising discovery. Some of the patients I spoke to came from dysfunctional families, others did not, but their partners were almost always from extremely dysfunctional backgrounds, where they had to endure stress and suffering far beyond the usual. While trying to get along with their addicted spouses, these partners (who are called “co-alcoholics” by alcoholism specialists) unconsciously recreated and relived key childhood memories.

Mainly through conversations with the wives and girlfriends of dependent men, I began to understand the nature of too much love. From their stories it was clear that in the role of "saviors" they needed to feel both their superiority and suffering. It helped me to understand the depth of their dependence on men, who, in turn, depended on alcohol or drugs. It was clear that in these couples both partners needed help and that both were literally dying, each from their addiction: he from alcohol or drug abuse, she from the effects of severe stress.

These women helped me understand the profound impact their childhood experiences had on how they built their relationships with men as adults. To all of us who love too much, they have a lot to say about why we have developed addictions to dysfunctional relationships, why we perpetuate our problems, and, most importantly, how we can change and recover.

I don't mean to say that only women love too much. Some men "fixate" on love with the same passion, and their feelings and actions are due to the same childhood experiences and driving forces. However, most men who have had a difficult childhood do not develop relationship addiction. Through the interplay of cultural and biological factors, they tend to protect themselves and avoid suffering through activities that are more external than internal, impersonal rather than personal. They are prone to obsession with work, sports or hobbies, while a woman, under the influence of cultural and biological factors affecting her, “fixes” on love - perhaps just for such a flawed and closed person.

I hope this book will help anyone who loves too much, but it was written primarily for women, because too much love is primarily a "female" phenomenon. She has a very specific goal: to help women who are prone to destructive patterns of relationships with men, realize this fact, see the source of these behaviors and try to change their lives.

But if the woman who loves too much is you, I must warn you that my book is not for easy reading. If this definition applies to you and yet the book didn’t move you, didn’t excite you, bored you or pissed you off, or you didn’t manage to focus on its content, or you just thought how useful it would be for someone else, I advise you to reread it. over time. We all want to deny those truths that would be too painful or scary to accept. Negative - natural remedy self-protection, which operates automatically, without any request from our side. Perhaps, returning to this book later, you will be able to bear the meeting with your experiences and hidden feelings.

Please read slowly, try to understand these women and their stories with your mind and heart. The stories given here as examples may seem out of the ordinary to you. I assure you, it is quite the opposite. These personalities, characters and incidents, borrowed from hundreds of women with whom I have had the opportunity to communicate personally and professionally, who fall under the definition of "too loving", are not at all exaggerated. Their true stories are even more complicated and painful. If their problems seem to you more serious and serious than yours, let me tell you that your first reaction is typical of most of my clients. Each is sure that everything is “not so bad” for her, and even treats with sympathy the fate of other women who, in her opinion, are in “real” trouble.

Ironically, we women are able to empathize and understand the suffering that befalls others, but are blind to (or blinded by) our own suffering. I know this very well, because for most of my life I myself have been a woman who loves too much. But then it became such a serious threat to my physical and mental health that I had to closely examine the pattern of my relationships with men. Over the past few years, I have done a lot to change it, and these years have become the most fertile in my life.

Women who love too much

When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He,ll Change

* * *

Foreword

We love too much if we justify his bad temper, indifference or rudeness with a difficult childhood and try to take on the role of a psychotherapist.

We love too much if, while reading a guide like "How to Help Yourself", we note all the things that we think can help him.

We love too much if we do not like many of his character traits, values and actions, but we put up with them and think: more attractiveness and love - and he will want to change for us.

We love too much if the love endangers our emotional well-being and perhaps our health and safety.

In this book, we will try to understand why many women who are looking for a man who would love them inevitably find a partner who does not love them and is generally completely unbearable. We will see that love becomes too strong when our partner does not suit us, does not appreciate us, or does not pay attention to us, and yet we not only cannot part with him, but, on the contrary, the attraction and attachment to him only intensifies. We will understand why our desire and need to love, our love itself, turns into addiction.

I first realized that the phenomenon of “too much love” is a special syndrome of thoughts, feelings and actions after several years of working with alcoholics and drug addicts. After conducting hundreds of conversations with victims of alcohol and drug addiction and their loved ones, I made a surprising discovery. Some of the patients I spoke to came from dysfunctional families, others did not, but their partners were almost always from extremely dysfunctional backgrounds, where they had to endure stress and suffering far beyond the usual. While trying to get along with their addicted spouses, these partners (who are called “co-alcoholics” by alcoholism specialists) unconsciously recreated and relived key childhood memories.

But if the woman who loves too much is you, I must warn you that my book is not for easy reading. If this definition applies to you and yet the book didn’t move you, didn’t excite you, bored you or pissed you off, or you didn’t manage to focus on its content, or you just thought how useful it would be for someone else, I advise you to reread it. over time. We all want to deny those truths that would be too painful or scary to accept. Denial is a natural self-protection tool that works automatically, without any request from our side. Perhaps, returning to this book later, you will be able to bear the meeting with your experiences and hidden feelings.

I hope that for all women who love too much, this book will not only help to better understand their true situation, but also inspire them to start changing it. And for this, you need to no longer focus all your love and attention on obsession with a man, but direct them to your own recovery and your own life.

And here is the time to issue a second warning. This book, like many self-help guides, has a list of steps to take in order to change. If you decide that you really need to take these steps, then, as with all psychotherapeutic changes, it will take years of work and dedication on your part. The model of too much love that you are bogged down in will not get rid of quickly. We memorize this pattern early and repeat it diligently, so fears and constant trials await you on the way to liberation from it. I am not warning you about this to intimidate you. After all, if you don't change the pattern of your relationship with your partner, you will have to fight a grueling struggle for the rest of your life. Only in this case, the goal of the struggle will not be development, but only survival. The choice is yours. By choosing to embark on a path of recovery, you will change from a woman who loves too much to one who loves herself enough to stop suffering.

Chapter first. Love for a man who doesn't love you

Victim of love
Your heart is broken.
Sing a simple song to me.
Victim of love
Your role is so beaten
In it you have already succeeded quite well.
... I see everything, be quiet.
You're walking on a tightrope
Hiding tears from everyone
And still looking for love.
Glen Frey "Victim of Love"

It was Jill's first session, and her expression was one of doubt. Petite and fresh, with blonde Orphan Annie curls, she was frozen on the edge of her chair, looking at me. Everything about her seemed round: the oval of her face, her slightly plump figure, and especially her blue eyes. She glanced around at the diplomas and certificates hanging framed on the office wall, asked a few questions about educational institution, which I graduated from, for a license as a consultant, and then, with obvious pride, announced that I was studying at the law school.

There was a brief silence. The girl looked down at her folded hands.

“Perhaps it’s time to move on to why I came here,” she rattled off, as if she hoped that a quick run of words would help her gain courage. “I did this—I mean, went to a therapist—because I feel really bad. Of course, it's all about the men. That is, in me and in men. I'm always doing something that scares them away. Every time it starts great. They run after me and all that, and then, when they get to know me better,” she visibly tensed, trying to overcome the boiling pain, “everything falls apart.

The girl looked at me - now unshed tears shone in her eyes - and continued, more slowly:

- I want to understand what is wrong here, what needs to be changed in myself, and I will certainly do it. I will do whatever it takes. I'm very stubborn.

Here she began again.

It's not that I don't want to change. I just don't know why this happens to me all the time. I'm afraid to love again. Because every time I get nothing but pain. Soon I will be truly afraid of men.

Shaking her head so that the ringlets of curls bounced, she explained with vehemence:

I don't want this to happen because I'm very lonely. I have a lot of work to do in law school, plus I have to earn my living. Therefore, I am constantly busy. In fact, in Last year All I did was work, go to classes, study and sleep. But my life lacked a man.

She hurriedly continued her story:

“Then I met Randy when I was visiting friends in San Diego two months ago. He is a lawyer. We met one evening when friends dragged me to a dance. It turned out that we were just made for each other. We had so many topics to talk about…but I think it was mostly me who did the talking. But he seems to like it. And it was so great to communicate with a man who is interested in what is important to me.

Her eyebrows twitched.

“He seemed to be drawn to me. You see, he asked if I was married (and I have been divorced for two years), if I live alone, etc.

It wasn't hard to imagine Jill's excitement as she chatted with Randy to the blaring music that first night. And with what delight she received him a week later, when he, traveling on business, turned to Los Angeles to see her. At dinner, she invited the guest to spend the night with her, so as not to embark on a long journey back at night looking. He accepted the invitation, and on the same night an affair began between them.

- He was great. He let me feed him, he obviously liked the way I looked after him. In the morning I ironed his shirt - I love taking care of men. We got along great. She smiled thoughtfully.

But from her further account, it became clear that almost immediately Jill developed an irresistible obsession, the object of which was Randy. When he returned home to San Diego, the phone was already ringing. Jill tenderly told him that she was worried about how he had come so long and was glad to know that he had made it safely. She thought her call startled him a little. She apologized for the concern and hung up, but she began to be tormented by growing anxiety, fueled by the thought: she again loves much more than her chosen one.

“Randy once told me not to put pressure on him, otherwise he would just disappear. I was terribly scared. After all, it's all about me. I have to love him and at the same time leave him alone. But I don’t know how, so I was getting more and more scared. And the more I panicked, the more I clung to him.

Soon Jill was calling him almost every evening. They agreed to call each other in turns, but often; when it was Randy's turn, time passed, and she was so worried that she couldn't wait for his call. She still couldn't sleep, so she called him. Their conversations were long but of little substance.

- He said that he forgot, and I asked: “How could you forget? Because I never forget." Then we began to discuss the reasons, and it seemed to me that he was afraid to get close to me, and I wanted to help him. He kept saying he didn't know what he wanted out of life, and I tried to help him figure out what was most important to him.

So, trying to get more emotional openness from Randy, Jill found herself in the role of a psychotherapist.

She flew to San Diego twice to spend the weekend with him. The second time, he paid no attention to her all day: he watched TV and drank beer. It was one of the worst days of her life.

- Did he drink a lot? I asked Jill.

She was clearly alarmed.

- No, not really. Actually, I don't know. Never seriously thought about it. Of course, the night we met, he was drinking, but it was quite natural. After all, we were at a bar. Sometimes, when we talked on the phone, I heard the clink of ice in a glass and teased him about it - well, what does he drink alone ... To tell the truth, there was not a single day with me that he did not drink, but I thought, he just likes to have a drink. After all, this is normal, right?

The girl paused, collecting her thoughts.

- You know, sometimes on the phone he said rather strange things, especially for a lawyer: he chatted something incoherent and unintelligible, forgot and got confused. But I never thought it was the booze. I don't even know how I explained it. She probably just didn't allow herself to think about it.

She looked at me sadly.

“Maybe he really drank too much, but it must have been because I was bothering him. Probably, I didn’t interest him enough, and he didn’t want to meet with me. She continued excitedly. - My husband also never wanted to communicate with me - it was obvious! Her eyes filled with tears, but she tried to overcome herself. - And my father too ... Why do they all treat me like that? What am I doing wrong?

As soon as Jill realized that there was a problem between her and the person dear to her, the girl longed not only to solve it, but also to take responsibility for creating it. She believed that if Randy, her husband and father failed to love her, then it was all about what she did or failed to do.

Jill's moods, feelings, actions and life experiences were typical of a woman for whom to love means to suffer. She had many of the characteristics of a woman who loves too much. Regardless of the specific details of their stories and efforts, whether they endured a long and difficult relationship with one man or whole line unhappy affairs with many men, they had one thing in common. Loving too much doesn't mean loving too many men, or falling in love too often, or sinking too deeply into genuine love for another person. It means being truly obsessed with a man and calling this obsession “love”, letting it take over your feelings and much of your actions, realizing that it is bad for your health and well-being, and yet not having the strength to get rid of it. It means measuring the extent of your love by the depth of your anguish.

As you read this book, you may find yourself identifying with Jill, or one of the women in these stories, and wondering if I, too, am a woman who loves too much? Even if your problems with men are similar to those of these women, you may find it difficult to put on labels that fit their situations. We have strong emotional reactions to words such as "alcoholism", "incest", "violence" and "addiction", and sometimes we are not able to realistically look at our lives because we are very afraid that these labels apply to us or to to those we love. Unfortunately, the inability to use the right words when they are really appropriate prevents us from getting the help we need. On the other hand, these scary labels may not be relevant to your life. Maybe there are more subtle problems in your childhood. Perhaps your father, providing the family with material well-being, deep down did not trust women and did not like them, and this inability to love did not allow you to love yourself. Or, in relation to you, mothers could show jealousy and rivalry, although in public she praised you and put you in a favorable light. As a result, you developed a need to be a good girl in order to earn her approval, and at the same time, you were afraid of feeling the hostility that your success caused in her.

It is impossible to cover all the many varieties of dysfunctional families in one book - this would require several volumes. However, it is important to understand that all dysfunctional families have one common property: inability to discuss indigenous Problems. Such families may have other problems that are discussed, often to the point of nausea, but behind this often lie deep secrets that make the family dysfunctional. It is the depth of the secrecy - the inability to talk about problems, not their severity - that determines both how dysfunctional a family becomes and how much damage it causes to its members.

dysfunctional they call a family whose members play rigid roles, and communication between them is strictly limited to statements corresponding to these roles. Members of such a family do not have the right to express the full range of experiences, desires, needs and feelings, but must be limited to the performance of their roles, which are consistent with the roles played by other family members. Roles are present in all families, but in order for the family to remain prosperous, its members must change with changing circumstances and adapt to each other. Thus, maternal care appropriate to one year old baby, is completely unsuitable for a thirteen year old, so the role of the mother must change to match reality. In dysfunctional families, basic aspects of reality are denied and roles remain rigid.

If no one has the right to discuss the issue of what affects each member of the family individually and the family as a whole, moreover, a ban is imposed on such discussions - implicit (the topic of the conversation changes) or explicit (“We do not want to talk about such things! ”), we learn not to trust our impressions or feelings. Our family denies our reality, and we begin to deny it too. And this seriously disrupts our normal development when we learn to live and interact with people. It is this fundamental disturbance of normal development that is inherent in women who love too much. We lose the ability to see when someone or something is hurting us. Situations that others would consider dangerous, unpleasant, or harmful, and would naturally try to avoid, do not repel us because we are unable to assess them realistically or with self-preservation instincts. We either do not trust our feelings, or do not use their prompting. On the contrary, we are attracted to precisely those dangers, intrigues, dramas, and trials that other people with a healthier and more balanced past would naturally shy away from. Because of this attraction, we cause even more damage to ourselves, because much of what attracts us is a repetition of what has already been experienced during the period of growing up. We get more and more injuries.

Such a woman - a woman who loves too much - none of us becomes by chance. If a girl grows up in our society, and even in such a family, this can create some predictable patterns of behavior. These are signs that are typical for women who are too in love, like Jill, and maybe like you.

1. You typically grew up in a dysfunctional family where your emotional needs were not met.

2. You yourself have received little genuine care, and therefore try to compensate for this unmet need by becoming a nanny, especially for those men who, for one reason or another, seem to you to be flawed.

3. Because you never managed to change your parents to give you the love and affection you sorely lacked, you overreact to a familiar type of emotionally unavailable man who you can try to change again by giving him your love.

4. Fearing that you will be abandoned, you are ready to do anything to keep the connection from breaking.

5. Almost nothing is too troublesome, time-consuming or expensive for you if it can "help" the person you are attached to.

6. You are used to the lack of love in intimate relationships, and therefore are ready to wait, hope and try even harder to please a man.

7. In relationships with men, you are always ready to take on a large share of responsibility, guilt and reproaches.

8. Your self-esteem is at a critically low level, and deep down you do not think that you are worthy of happiness. Rather, you think you should still earn the right to enjoy life.

9. As a child, you did not feel secure, and therefore feel an urgent need to be the mistress of your men and your relationships. You pass off this desire to control people and situations as a desire to be useful.

10. In relationships, you rely much more on the dream of what they could be than on the real situation.

11. You suffer from dependence on men and emotional pain.

12. You may have an emotional and often biochemical predisposition to abuse drugs, alcohol and/or certain food products, especially rich in sugar.

13. You are drawn to people who are weighed down by problems that need to be resolved, or you get involved in confusing, uncertain and emotionally painful situations, and this does not allow you to focus on the responsibility that you bear to yourself.

14. You may be prone to bouts of depression and, to prevent them, try to take advantage of the excitement that unstable relationships provide you.

15. You are not attracted to kind, reliable, balanced men who show interest in you. Such nice guys seem boring to you.

In Jill, to a greater or lesser extent, almost all of these signs were clearly present. Given that she embodied so many of the qualities listed above and what I learned about Randy, I assumed that he might have a drinking problem. Women of this emotional nature are forever drawn to men who, for one reason or another, are emotionally unavailable. One of the main manifestations of emotional unavailability is the presence of dependence.

From the beginning, Jill was willing to take on more responsibility for starting and continuing the relationship than Randy. Like so many others too loving women, she was clearly a very responsible person, focused on success, and managed to achieve a lot in different areas of her life. And yet she had very low self-esteem. Achievements in study and work could not balance the personal failures that pursued her in love. Every time Randy forgot to call, it dealt a tangible blow to her already shaky self-image, which she then heroically tried to strengthen by trying to draw signs of attention from him. Her willingness to take all the blame for a broken relationship is just as typical as her failure to realistically assess the situation and take care of herself, i.e., leave when the lack of reciprocity becomes apparent.

Women who love too much think little of themselves in love relationships. They devote all their energy to changing their partner's behavior or feelings, and to do this they resort to the most desperate tricks like Jill's expensive long-distance calls and her flights to San Diego (remember that her personal budget was extremely limited). In her telephone "therapy sessions" with Randy, she was far more trying to turn him into the person she wanted him to be than to help him discover his true self. True, Randy himself did not aspire to this at all. If he was interested in such a path of self-discovery, he would do most of the work himself, instead of sitting back while Jill tries to help him understand himself. She struggled with it only because otherwise there was only one way out: to accept what Randy really is and accept that he is a person who does not care about her and their relationship.

But let's go back to the session with Jill - so we better understand that brought her to my office that day.

She talked about her father.

“He was so stubborn. I swore to myself that someday I'd beat him. She thought for a moment. “But I haven't been able to do it. Maybe that's why I went to law school. I like to imagine myself speaking in court and win!

She smiled broadly at the thought, and then became serious again.

Do you know what I once did? Made him say he loves me and hug me.

Jill tried to make it sound like it was a funny incident from her teenage years, but she couldn't: her voice was clearly resentful.

If I hadn't made him, he would never have done it. But he loved me. I just couldn't show it. And I could never repeat those words again. So I'm really glad that I forced him: otherwise I would never have expected anything like this from him. After all, I waited for so many years, and at eighteen I told him: “Now you will tell me that you love me” - and did not leave the place until he said. Then she asked him to hug me, only at first I had to hug him myself. He somehow cringed and lightly patted me on the shoulder, but that's okay. I really needed him to do it.

Tears welled up in her eyes again, and this time they ran down her plump cheeks.

Why was it so hard for him to do it? It seems so easy to tell your daughter that you love her.

She stared down at her folded hands again.

“Because I was out of my skin. That is why I argued and fought with him so fiercely. I kept thinking: I’ll take over, and he will have to be proud of me. More than anything, I needed his approval. That is, perhaps, his love ...

From further conversation it became clear that in the family the father's dislike for Jill was explained by the fact that he wanted a son, and a daughter was born. It was much easier for everyone, including Jill herself, to accept such a simple explanation of the father's coldness towards his own child than the truth about the father. But, after going through a rather long course of psychotherapy, Jill realized that her father did not have close emotional ties. with no one that he was practically unable to express warm feelings, love or approval to anyone close to him. There were always “reasons” for his emotional closeness: a quarrel, a difference of opinion, or the irreversible fact that Jill was born a girl. All family members preferred to consider these reasons legitimate, rather than dig into the true source of the invariably estranged relationship with his father.

It was easier for Jill to keep beating herself up than to admit that her father was basically incapable of love. While the guilt lay on her, there was hope that someday she would be able to change so much that her father would no longer be able to remain the same.

When an event occurs that hurts our feelings, telling ourselves that we are to blame, we are actually asserting that everything is in our power: if we change, the pain will stop - we all do it. In most cases, this is the driving force behind the self-flagellation of a woman who loves too much. Blaming ourselves, we cling to the hope that we can find out what our mistake is and correct it. This will help us master the situation and get rid of the pain.

This pattern was clearly evident in Jill's session, which took place shortly after she told me about her marriage. Because she was irresistibly attracted to those with whom she could recreate the emotionally poor climate of her adolescence with her father, marriage became an opportunity for her to try again to win the love she had been denied.

Love is a wonderful feeling, but for someone it has long turned into a pathological addiction with torment, suffering and inappropriate relationships that drag on. long years. Often, those who decide to get out of this vicious circle again step on the same rake, and the new partner turns out to be no better than the previous one. Why is it so? And what to do with it?

Read Online Women Who Love Too Much

About the book

The author of the book, Robin Norwood, is a well-known psychologist who specializes in family relationships. She has years of successful consulting practice behind her. And she immediately honestly warns those who open her book that they will not have easy reading, but serious work on themselves. First, Norwood talks about the “too strong love” syndrome, explores its nature. The psychologist is sure that this is a predominantly female problem. The author is convinced that all the difficulties of women who are deeply unhappy in relationships come from childhood, from families where they could not give the girl the necessary emotional support. Often this comes from fathers whose insularity and emotional coldness are very harmful to their daughters. Girls try their best to earn the approval of their parents. And in adulthood, women who grow up in such conditions are attracted to emotionally unavailable men, who often have painful addictions.

The fair sex is trying to remake partners, turn them into some kind of ideal, from which these extremely problematic men are infinitely far away. But women turn a blind eye to this. The psychologist calls, first of all, to realize the problem. For many, this stage is the most difficult. And then Norwood offers a detailed step-by-step guide to action on how to stop suffering, get out of relationships that destroy, and build new healthy and warm relationships with the “right” partner, without repeating past mistakes.

The book describes many different people, their life stories are given, on the example of which Norwood analyzes important points. And all this real cases with which the psychologist has encountered in practice. Readers will find many useful tips. An experienced psychologist calls for courage - it's never too late to rewrite the script of your life. Robin Norwood has helped many women. First published over 30 years ago, this book has been published in dozens of countries and has been an international bestseller all this time.

Robin Norwood (born 1945) is a family therapist and best-selling author of women's issues that has been translated into several languages. In this work, I used the main method of finding the latent causes of the conflict that leads to suffering, to eliminate which you need to be able to go beyond the wrong attitude to life and reconsider values. The book "Women Who Love Too Much" has sold millions of copies worldwide. The author is married for the fourth time and now lives with his family in California.

Complexity of presentation

The target audience

Women, single and married, who want to stop feeling sorry for themselves and look for external reasons for their failures.

The book helps women discover the truth and open their eyes to current events in order to consider perspectives. We rarely know how to use the opportunities that life gives us every time. How not to be held hostage to love, to feel beautiful and whole, not to allow dependent relationships to develop in a couple, how to finally stop being controlled and helpless - the writer will tell about all this.

Reading together

Norwood talks about various cases from his therapeutic practice in the book. Women love too much if everything in their life begins with the word "he", that is, a man. When they try to help him, they explain to themselves his bad mood and detachment when they see in him unsympathetic character traits, but put up with them when emotional well-being is threatened due to love relationships- all this testifies to too strong love. For many, this becomes the leitmotif of life, and obsession with partner problems begins to affect their lives in a way that is not in the best way.

Why does love become an addiction? In relation to a man, many women experienced a state similar to drug addiction. Before we get rid of this problem, we must acknowledge that it exists. Any obsession originates not from love, but from fear. In love, this fear is expressed in the rejection of being alone, being unloved, rejected. Loving too much is more of a woman's prerogative than a man's. And the most important thing is to find those means that will help change female destinies. The book contains stories of women, complex, full of suffering and mistakes. The path to their correction is long, it is impossible to cut it, getting out of those traps into which women on a whim fell.

There are certain characteristics of women who love too much:

Their childhood was spent in a dysfunctional family.

Excessive tenderness and care for a man is a consequence of the lack of affection in the parental family.

A woman tries to change a man with her love.

She makes any compromises, just to keep him.

The woman takes the blame for problems in relationships to a greater extent.

Women's self-esteem is critically low, and there is no inner feeling that she deserves happiness.

From self-doubt, a woman desperately seeks to control a man, trying to supposedly be useful to him.

Emotional suffering becomes the basis of an unhealthy addiction to a man.

A woman ceases to be responsible for her personal life when she approaches people whose problems need to be solved.

Women like "bad guys", and reliable, kind and stable, showing a sincere interest in them, seem incredibly insipid.

Best Quotes

“We women can respond with understanding and sympathy to the suffering of others while remaining immune to our own suffering.”

What does the book teach

Recovery from the syndrome of too much love goes through several phases. First comes the realization of actions and the desire to stop is born. Then the readiness to receive help turns on and some steps are taken for this. Then the woman begins to change the algorithm of her thoughts, feelings and actions, a recovery program is launched. In the next phase, there is a choice in favor of improving life, self-love appears through the rejection of hatred and the emergence of tolerance for oneself, self-acceptance. And after all, sincere love for yourself is born, when the old schemes for manipulating other people no longer work. The circle of friends and partners may even completely change.

The more we allow freedom of behavior and choice for ourselves, the easier it is for us to allow the same in relation to others.

To confront fear means to unite with like-minded people.

You should not think about specific results, just affirm yourself, a prosperous present and future.

Robin Norwood

Women who love too much

The book that will change your life

(how our thirst for love becomes a chronic incurable disease)

If loving necessarily means suffering for us, then we love too much.

Why do many women become attracted to and become so strongly attached to insensitive men, men who value work, alcohol or the company of other women more - men who do not share their feelings and cannot return love for love? In her best-selling book in the US, therapist Robin Norwood helps such women understand and accept and change the way they love.

Telling readers about the most different occasions From her therapeutic practice, Robin Norwood offers them a way to free themselves from the fetters of such destructive love. Women who love too much can get rid of the suffering and pain that close relationships bring to them - if they find the strength in themselves to accept and love themselves.

“.... If “love” for us necessarily means “suffering” - we love too much. It is not uncommon for women to find themselves fatally following the same dramatic scenario in their relationships with men over and over again: unrequited feelings - affection - unrequited love - unhealthy relationships. They then go to great lengths to try to mend those relationships, or suffer severely, despairing of making their marriage happy. Most women believe that dramatic, often unrequited love that brings with it suffering, pain and disappointment is the only possible kind of real, genuine love. Most of us have loved like this at least once in our lives, for many such unrequited love has become habitual, and some are so attached to their partner that they are hardly able to live independently - their interests and their lives.

In this book, we will take a closer look at the reasons that motivate so many women who seek love and loving man, it is fatally inevitable to find inattentive, selfish partners who do not reciprocate. We will learn why, even if our relationship with a loved one does not satisfy us, it is still so difficult for us to break it. We will understand how our desire to love, our thirst for love, our very love becomes a passion, an addiction, an addiction, a chronic incurable disease.

Robin Norwood

Foreword

If love means suffering to us, then we love too much. When most of our conversations with close friends and girlfriends are about him - his problems, his thoughts, his feelings - and almost all of our sentences begin with "He ..." - we love too much.

When we attribute his thoughtfulness, bad mood, indifference, or aggressiveness to problems associated with an unhappy childhood and try to become his doctor, we love too much.

When we read a self-help book and underline all the passages that we think can help him, we love too much.

When we dislike many of his basic personality traits, his values, his ways of behaving, but we put up with it, thinking that if we become tender and attractive enough, he will want to change for us, we love too much.

When our relationships pose a threat to our emotional well-being and perhaps even our safety and health, we definitely love too much.

Despite all the suffering and dissatisfaction, “too much love” is common for many women, almost certain that this is how intimate relationships should be. Most of us have loved "too much" at least once. For many, it has become a recurring theme in their lives. Some have become so obsessed with the problems of their partner and relationship with him that they are hardly able to continue a normal life and activities.

In this book, we will carefully consider the reasons why many women who are looking for a loved one invariably find indifferent or even dangerous partners. We will explore why it is so difficult for us to break up with a partner, even when we know that he does not meet our needs. We will see that "love" turns into "love too much" in cases where the partner is not suitable for us, when he is indifferent or unavailable, and yet we cannot lose him - we want him, we even more need German We will understand how our desire to love, our very desire for love, becomes an addiction.

"Addicted" is a scary word. It conjures up images of heroin addicts, needle addicts, and apparently self-destructive lives. We do not like this word, and we do not want to use it as a concept to describe our relationship with men. But many, many of us have been "addicts" to men. Like any other drug addict, we need to recognize the severity of the problem before we begin to get rid of it.

If you have ever experienced an obsessive infatuation with a man, then you probably suspected that the root of your obsession lies not in love, but in fear. All who are obsessed with love are full of fears - the fear of being alone, the fear of being unworthy and unloved, the fear of being rejected, abandoned or destroyed. We share love in the desperate hope that the man we are obsessed with will take care of us and relieve us of our fears. But instead, fears (as well as our obsession) intensify until the need to give love in order to receive the same in return becomes the driving force in our lives. And because our strategy doesn't work every time, we start to love even more. We love too much.

I was first introduced to the phenomenon of "too much love" as a specific syndrome of certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving after seven years of counseling with people who abuse alcohol and drugs. After spending hundreds of conversations with them and their families, I made a surprising discovery: sometimes the clients I talked to grew up in dysfunctional families, sometimes they grew up in prosperous ones, but their partners always grew up in very dysfunctional families, where they had to experience stress and suffering far beyond the norm. In an attempt to cope with their reckless spouses, these partners (known in the alcohol treatment practice as "co-alcoholics") unconsciously re-created and relived important aspects of their childhood.

It was the wives and girlfriends of addicted men who helped me understand the nature of "too much love." Their biographies revealed their need for superiority and simultaneously the suffering they experienced in their role as "rescuers", and they also helped me to rationalize their addiction to men who in turn were addicted to alcohol or drugs. It became clear to me that in such couples both partners need help, that both of them are literally dying from their addictions: he - from the consequences of chemical poisoning, she - from the consequences of extreme stress.

These women gave me the opportunity to understand what an unusually strong influence childhood experiences have on the scheme of attitude towards men in adulthood. They have something to tell everyone who has loved too much about how we develop a preference for difficult relationships, how we perpetuate our problems, but - most importantly - and how we can change and return to normal life.

I don't mean by this that only women can love too much. Some men practice possession in relationships with as much zeal as any woman; their feelings and behaviors originate in the same childhood experiences and family relationships. However, most men with difficult childhoods are not obsessed with women. As a result of the interaction of cultural and biological factors, they usually try to protect themselves and avoid suffering by pursuing external rather than internal goals, achieving something impersonal rather than personal. They are more likely to become obsessed with work, sports, or hobbies, while women tend to be obsessive in relationships - perhaps with equally traumatized and alienated men.

I hope this book will help anyone who loves too much, although it is written primarily for women, because loving too much is a predominantly female phenomenon. The purpose of the book is very specific: to help women whose relationships with men are destructive to their lives, to realize the fact of such an influence, to understand the reason for their behavior and to acquire the means to change their lives.