Why Do I Fall in Love So Easily and Always End Up Getting Hurt? Here's Why! - Olubunmi Mabel
”Why do I fall in love so easily and always end up getting hurt?”
Have you ever been in a relationship that just seemed to be too good to be true?
You fall head-over-heels in love with the person, and they seem to feel the same way about you.
You’re perfect together, or so it seems.
But then, inevitably, things start to go wrong.
Your partner starts to change their behavior, becoming distant and difficult to please.
Before long, you’re left brokenhearted and wondering what went wrong.
If this sounds familiar, then you may have a tendency of falling in love too easily.
And while there’s nothing wrong with being open and trusting of others, it can often lead to heartache when things turn sour.
So why do we fall in love so easily?
What is it about love that makes us so vulnerable?
Why do we keep falling for the wrong people?
Do you find yourself falling in love time and time again, regardless of how many times you’ve been hurt in the past?
Despite being told by your friends and family that you should be more careful, does it feel like you just can’t help but give your heart away easily?
In this post, we’ll explore why people fall in love so easily and always get hurt in the process.
We’ll also look at some ways to protect yourself from getting too attached to someone who might not be good for you.
Why Do I Fall in Love So Easily and Always End Up Getting Hurt? 15 Reasons Why
1. You confuse love with lust
Love makes us feel giddy and all warm inside while lust makes our hormones run wild.
It is very easy to confuse these two feelings especially when you are young and everything seems new and exciting.
But if you want to avoid getting hurt, don’t mistake lust for love.
They may have similar qualities but are very different emotions.
The difference is this:
Lust can be felt for anyone at any time; it is an emotion that does not require much effort from your side because it is a physical attraction (usually) between two people who may or may not even know each other well enough to comprehend their personalities as a whole as well as their flaws.
Love, on the other hand, comes more gradually and usually involves trust, respect and admiration before anything else.
Love is a commitment while lust is just a temporary attraction that fades away when another pretty face comes along.
Falling in love is easy because it’s a natural response to seeing someone we find attractive.
The best way to avoid getting hurt is to be realistic about who the other person is and what the relationship can offer us.
2 . You’re too trusting
This is probably the most common reason that people end up being hurt.
They meet someone, and decide to trust them wholeheartedly.
The other person looks trustworthy and sounds trustworthy, so they’re automatically trusted.
The thing is, even someone who seems trustworthy can end up hurting you.
When the trust is betrayed, it hurts twice as much.
It’s easy to give your trust away too easily because people want to be open and loving towards others, but this comes at a price.
Not everyone who seems trustworthy actually is, so keep this in mind before you trust someone completely.
A good way to protect yourself from getting hurt is to be more aware of who you’re dealing with and the situations you find yourself in.
3. You’re looking for love in all the wrong places
This is something I see all the time.
People who are loving and affectionate often find themselves in relationships with emotionally unavailable people because they look for love everywhere but within themselves.
They put everyone else before them, so it takes time before someone can actually get close enough to love them back the way they want to be loved.
This leads to loving people who don’t love them back, and getting hurt because this person keeps leading them on.
It’s important to love yourself before you can expect anyone else to.
When you learn how to be happy on your own, then meeting someone who loves you for who you are becomes much easier.
4. You think you can change them
People often fall in love with someone they think is perfect, but has one fatal flaw that they’re convinced they can fix because “they can see the potential”.
It’s like saying, “They’re almost the man/woman of my dreams; I just need to make them a little more like me.”
The problem with this is, people can’t be changed.
They may agree to change for you temporarily but when the honeymoon phase is over, they’ll go back to their old ways (if they ever changed in the first place).
People have to change themselves because it’s something they want deep down inside.
It’s not your job to change them, so don’t make this your personal goal.
5 . You don’t know how to recognize red flags early on (or you choose to ignore them)
Red flags are warnings for a reason; they alert you to a problem that hasn’t presented itself yet.
If your gut is telling you something isn’t right, then it usually means there’s a good reason for that feeling.
Ignoring these warnings can allow a problem to turn into a catastrophe.
The best way to protect yourself from getting hurt is to always listen to your gut and pay attention to what you’re feeling about a person.
If your instincts are telling you that something is wrong, then it’s likely something is wrong.
Relationships require discussions about your pasts and there are some things that should be deal breakers from early on.
If someone has done something like cheat on their last 2 girlfriends/boyfriends, it’s not a good sign that they won’t do it again to you (even if they swear up and down that it was the other person’s fault each time).
6. You let your emotions get the better of you and make decisions without thinking things through first
When you’re in love, it’s easy to become blinded by your emotions and think with your heart instead of your head.
The thing is, when this happens too often without using our heads, bad things happen.
As much as it sucks, sometimes you have to treat your emotions the way pilots of a plane do: turn them off and make decisions based on logic.
When you think things through from a logical standpoint instead of an emotional one, bad decisions are easier to spot before they turn into real problems.
7. You don’t have enough self-confidence
Self-confident people have standards, while those with low self-esteem will take whatever they can get.
If you don’t have standards, you’ll fall in love easily with every Tom, Dick, and Harry that shows a little bit of interest in you.
8. You have a bit of abandonment issues
You may have been abandoned by your parents as a child.
Not in a literal sense, but in an emotional sense.
Maybe they were always absent, working late and traveling abroad.
Maybe they were too busy fighting and never had time for you.
Maybe you were the kid that was always left at home alone, or sent to live with distant relatives for extended periods of time.
Or maybe you grew up in an environment where your parents constantly threatened to leave you if you didn’t behave, saying things like “If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to leave!”
Or maybe one parent did leave and the other constantly reminded you how lucky you are that they didn’t leave you too.
Whatever caused it, abandonment issues can cause intense anxiety when faced with the idea of losing someone close to you.
And this often leads us to seek out relationships that will inevitably end badly in one way or another — sometimes because our partners turn out to be emotionally immature and incapable of commitment, sometimes because we ourselves are emotionally immature and incapable of commitment.
But whatever the reason, we find ourselves falling head over heels in love only to realize that we didn’t really know the person.
9. You’re a hopeless romantic
You’re the type of person who’s always looking for the perfect partner in crime, a soul mate that can fulfill all your deepest desires.
You’re not afraid to fall in love and you don’t give up until you find the right one.
You’re an incurable romantic who won’t settle for less than what you think is perfect for you.
10. You fall in love easily because you are a good person
You are a good person and that is why you can’t help but fall in love so easily.
You see the best in people, you believe their lies and you want to make them happy by giving them everything they want.
That is why they take advantage of your innocence and kind heart.
You can’t help but fall in love with people who don’t deserve your love or your kindness because you think that if you give them enough of yourself, they will change for the better and will start loving you back.
But nothing changes or gets better, but instead it only gets worse and more painful for you every single day.
Maybe you’ve been told time and time again that you’re a “nice guy/nice girl.”
You are kind, thoughtful and generous, but sometimes these qualities can be mistaken for weakness or naivete.
You don’t want to think badly of people because you assume they have the same positive intentions as you do.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as nice as you are.
And that’s why you keep getting hurt.
11. We fall in love so easily because it’s a survival mechanism
Another reason we fall in love so easily is because it’s a survival mechanism – we want to procreate and keep the species going.
We fall in love so easily because we’re supposed to.
Most of the time, our minds don’t even want us to fall in love but instead help us be at our best and attract someone deserving of us.
But we don’t realize this because we’re caught up in the moment and only focus on ourselves.
We want to hear what our hearts are saying, not our mind’s opinion.
12. You want to fill a void
You fall in love so quickly because you’re looking for someone to fill the emptiness inside of you, even if just temporarily.
We all want to believe we can find true love and happiness with somebody else, and we often allow our desires to cloud our better judgement and lead us into relationships that should never have happened.
For some of us, this emptiness is the black void left by our emotionally unavailable parents.
Some of us don’t even realize it’s there, but once we do fall in love with someone, everything they do suddenly becomes a reflection on how they’re making us feel better or worse about ourselves.
13. We fall in love so easily because we’re afraid of being lonely
We fall in love so easily because we’re afraid of being lonely.
We don’t want to be alone anymore and we know that if we give ourselves the opportunity to get to know somebody, the possibility of falling in love with that person is greater.
You may think you’re in love with that person or that they love you because they make you feel connected and give you a sense of belonging.
It’s hard to resist the temptation of love when we’ve been lonely for so long.
Sometimes you’ve got to ask yourself if you are in love, lonely, or afraid of being lonely.
14. You are in love easily because you have a great imagination
You can imagine yourself in love and you can imagine someone else in love with you.
This quality of yours is actually positive because you’re able to use your imagination in a creative way.
The only problem is that sometimes your imagination gets the best of you and it’s not always accurate or realistic about how love really works.
15. You’re too focused on the future
You haven’t learned to live in the moment.
You are too interested in a relationship, either as a friend or something more intimate, and you see a lot of potential in people that might be untrue.
If you find yourself falling hard and fast, elated at the thought of a new person, new friendship etc., you need to learn how to slow down and take things one step at a time.
Stop thinking about what could be and focus on what’s happening right now.
Everyone has potential but it’s up to you to discover who they really are before getting invested too deeply into anything.
You need to learn how to relax a little when it comes to falling in love.
Don’t ever think you have no power over your emotions, because you do.
Don’t ever feel you can’t help but fall in love easily.
Now that you know the reasons you fall in love hard and fast and end up getting hurt, you can learn how to deal with your situation.
You can’t afford to keep getting hurt.
