Do you fall in love quickly? Perhaps you’ve met someone for the first time and thought, “Oh, it seems like I want to marry this girl and spend the rest of my days with her.” If you find yourself often diving headfirst into love but it doesn’t ultimately lead to long-lasting and strong relationships, then you’re likely susceptible to emotional hemophilia. It can be a big problem and a headache that needs to be addressed and dealt with.
What is emophilia?
Emophilia is also called emotional promiscuity – it is defined as the tendency to fall in love quickly and often. People who are exposed to it develop an unwavering and all-encompassing passion for romantic interest. But this is not a fleeting feeling that can disappear on its own. Emophilia can be described as a true obsession with an object of romantic interest. A person susceptible to it finds it difficult to cope with obsessive thoughts about who he feels emotions towards, and he is also unable to keep his feelings under control.
Why emophilia could be a problem?
Of course, infatuation is a pleasant feeling, but those who experience it too quickly and easily shouldn’t be envied. There are several problems that individuals with emotional hemophilia face.
The need for strong emotions, not relationships. People with emotional hemophilia often do not have a need for healthy and strong relationships, as it may seem at first glance. For them, the thrill, excitement, and “butterflies in the stomach” are more important, which arise from the feeling of being in love with someone.
The presence of a romantic interest causes the reward system in their brain to go into overdrive. This makes them feel inspired, content with life, and happy. However, if they’re not in love with anyone, their soul becomes a mess of negative emotions, prompting them to seek a new romantic interest to experience feelings for, and they find one very quickly.
Vulnerability to toxic relationships. The need for romantic experiences makes people with emophilia vulnerable to toxic relationships. Typically, experiencing infatuation, they tend to act impulsively and make rash decisions, making them an easy target for questionable personalities such as narcissists, manipulators, and psychopaths. Due to their quick emotional attachment, individuals prone to emophilia may not notice red flags in their interactions and may struggle to remove their rose-colored glasses, even if their partner displays negative qualities. And the longer the relationship lasts, the worse it becomes. Typically, this abyss engulfs them entirely, and it can be incredibly challenging to break free from a romantic bond, especially if one feels deeply attached to their partner. But even if a person susceptible to emophilia manages to escape from toxic relationships, they often find themselves in similar situations again and again. It may seem that they deliberately choose partners who create unhealthy emotional bonds and harm their well-being.
Indiscrimination in relationships. Another significant drawback of emophilia is that it can lead to indiscriminateness in relationships. It’s not always possible to feel true intimacy and attachment, such as those experienced in deep love for the women you date. In this case, emotions are based solely on passion, excitement, and lust. Therefore, having emotions for someone other than your girlfriend, you may easily cheat on her or maintain relationships with several appealing individuals simultaneously. Indiscrimination in relationships has many unpleasant consequences — from reputation loss to a deep sense of loneliness and an inability to cultivate healthy relationships.
How to deal with emophilia?
It’s important to timely tackle emophilia in order to stop worsening your life and getting into toxic relationships. There are several ways to help with this.
Stop diving headfirst into the abyss. Even if you feel a strong attachment to someone, don’t rush into anything beyond casual dates. Take a pause and analyze how the girl you like behaves. At this moment, try to switch off your romantic side and become the most meticulous critic for a while, so that nothing prevents you from being unbiased and objective. Perhaps your intuition tells you that something is wrong with the wonderful girl you liked. For example, she talks about moving in with you on the second date, hides important things when you ask her questions, gets angry for no reason. Or she allows herself to openly criticize you, tries to impose her worldview as the only right one, or makes you change to fit her preferences. So, if you notice such signs, stop, slow down, and think three times whether you need relationships that will lead to pain and disappointment.
Learn to spend time alone. Typically, people with emophilia struggle with loneliness and don’t know how to enjoy solitude. But you need to learn this if you want to stop falling in love serially. Practice self-care: exercise, proper nutrition, regular sleep schedule. Find a hobby that will distract you from the world and immerse you in an engaging activity.
Listen to the warnings of other people. Perhaps your best friend has repeatedly said that the girl you like is not someone you should be in a relationship with. And he did it out of sincere concern, not to crush your happiness, as you might have thought. Even your mom may have warned you that your new crush is not who she pretends to be. Due to emophilia, it can be difficult to figure out if someone worthy truly catches your interest. So, to avoid falling into the trap of another toxic lady, it’s worth taking feedback from close people and paying attention to their words. Your friends and relatives may notice red flags in the behavior of the person you like while you are blinded by strong feelings and see nothing but positive qualities in the new girl. Of course, the advice you receive from others may not always be helpful. But rejecting others’ perspectives is not worth it—sometimes they can offer a new perspective, help objectively assess the life situation you are in, and make the right decision.
Keep track of how your meetings went and analyze them. It’s important to include pragmatism rather than romance if you want to overcome emophilia and learn to create healthy romantic relationships. So, make it a rule to write down in your diary how the romantic meeting with another girl went, as well as your feelings after this event. Why do this? By rereading the entries, especially if you try to convey what happened in the smallest details, it will be easier to analyze the behavior of your romantic interest and compare it with the list of red flags in relationships. When keeping a diary, try not to idealize dates but to remain realistic. The more unbiased the entries, the easier it will be to protect yourself from another mistake and disappointment. Moreover, such a practice helps to engage in self-analysis and evaluate whether your feelings are genuine love or fleeting infatuation.
Take a break from relationships for a while. People with emophilia quickly move from one relationship to another. But to overcome the problem of fast infatuation, it’s important to abstain from new romantic experiences after breaking up with another girl. Distract yourself with other important things: self-care, self-improvement, and enhancing your own life. By taking a break from relationships, you can learn to feel good even when no one is around and better understand which girl you want to build future relationships with.
