Once in a lifetime — maybe more — you meet someone with eyes so unforgettable that you lose yourself staring into them. Some people love those eyes with such intensity that they end up dimming the light in their own.
So I can’t help but wonder: is it a red flag to love someone so much that you begin to hurt yourself, just to keep them in your life?
The Beauty and the Danger of Devotion
Being hopelessly devoted to someone teaches you two things, besides how much pain you can endure.
First, it teaches you that you can love — in a way that belongs in the all-time books, the kind of love poets spend lifetimes trying to describe. It shows you the depth of your heart, the intensity of your passion, the fire you’re capable of holding.
Second, it teaches you that when the other person doesn’t feel the same, devotion can turn into destruction. You don’t just love. You lose yourself.
On one hand, the feelings are intoxicating. The crush alone could fuel a thousand therapy sessions. The only thing I can compare it to is mania in bipolar disorder — and I know this because I’ve felt both.
In mania, you can feel “good” feelings in such extremes that it’s as if serotonin bazookas are firing in your head. It’s a war you don’t want to win. And yet, love can feel just like that — larger than life, euphoric, consuming.
But when your love is just another option for someone else, when it’s not fully returned, that’s when the light begins to fade. That’s when you start to lose yourself.
It doesn’t happen all at once. It starts small. You accept flaws as quirks. You tell yourself they’re “special.” You let them take a little more space, while you shrink. And before you realize it, your devotion has turned into self-abandonment.
The Scam of “You Can’t Love Someone Until You Love Yourself”
Maybe the real red flag isn’t that you can love too much. Perhaps it’s forgetting to water your own garden.
A lot of cheap life coaches repeat the mantra: “You cannot love someone if you don’t love yourself.” To me, that’s the biggest scam of our century. It frames love like a purity test, as if you must be perfect, healed, and whole to deserve love.
But that’s simply not true.
History proves it. Some of the greatest writers in history — the ones who gave us the deepest depictions of love — often hated themselves. Their pages bled with self-loathing, yet they gave us words that shaped how millions understand love today.
So yes, you can absolutely love even if you’re not a big fan of yourself. And sometimes you should. Love can be transformative. Love can become the mirror that shows you a better version of who you are. As Erich Fromm writes in The Art of Loving: «I am loved because I love.»
Bell Hooks echoes this in All About Love: love doesn’t require perfection. It requires intention, presence, care. Love, she says, is a transformative force. It can shape us into our best selves. But if we abandon ourselves in the process, it leaves us empty.
Both writers insist: love is not a feeling, it’s an act. A choice. A practiced art. And when that practice starts from a conscious place, rooted in care for self and other, it becomes a source of healing.
But here’s the key: while you’re loving, you need to notice the love coming back. Even if it’s not as deep as yours, even if it’s not the grand passion you dreamed of — cherish the parts of you that someone else treasures. Let their love remind you that you are lovable. Love yourself for being loved.
Because if you don’t, your devotion risks becoming martyrdom. You’ll think you’re proving your love, but really, you’re proving your willingness to vanish.
Love, Mania, and the Edge of Self
For me, there’s an even sharper edge: the overlap between obsessive love and mania. When I was manic, the world burned brighter. Music, touch, even silence felt electric. I felt invincible, radiant, unforgettable. That same rush is what love can bring — the dizzying highs, the feeling that life has finally cracked open to let you in.
But mania has a crash. And so does unbalanced love.
When love isn’t mutual, the highs are followed by lows that are just as extreme. You go from euphoria to emptiness, from feeling larger than life to feeling erased. It’s a cycle of hunger and hurt.
This is why loving too much feels like a red flag. Not because love itself is dangerous, but because devotion without reciprocity mirrors the instability of mania: unsustainable, unpredictable, and devastating when it collapses.
Because love — even in its messiest, most broken forms — is never the enemy. The enemy is the silence inside you when you stop watering your own garden.
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