If loving for us must inevitably mean suffering, then we love too intensely. Often women discover that in their relationships with men, they unwittingly keep following the same dramatic scenario: unreturned feelings—attachment—unhappy love—an unhealthy relationship. Then they put enormous effort into trying to fix those relationships, or they suffer brutally, having given up on making their marriage happy.
Most women believe that dramatic, often unreciprocated love that brings suffering, pain, and disappointment is the only possible form of real, true love. Many of us have loved this way at least once in our lives; for many, such unrequited love becomes habitual, and some become so attached to their partner that they can barely live on their own—with their own interests and their own life.
In this book, we’ll closely examine the reasons that push so many women who are searching for love and for a loving man to end up, in a fateful and seemingly inevitable way, with inattentive, selfish partners who do not return their feelings. We’ll find out why it’s so hard to break up—even when our relationship with a loved one doesn’t satisfy us. We’ll understand how our desire to love, our longing for love itself, and even our love become a passion, an addiction, a harmful habit, a chronic, incurable illness.