When It’s Crazy, It’s Not Love!

So many of us think we are in love with someone when the truth is, we are acting psychotic. OK, when I, as a psychologist, say psychotic, I don’t’ mean seeing things that aren’t there. I mean that we not only make decisions based on stuff that’s not real, but we don’t notice we made unhealthy decisions. We live a healthy life when our partners work for us—they help us accomplish our hopes and dreams. So why, why, why do we pick people who hurt us?

1. Riders on the Storm: Imagine how you learned to say you loved someone. Think back, to when you were a child. You loved your parents, but did your parents act like decent people. Many parents don’t, they are unpredictable and mean. So the ghosts from the early learning: love in the context of unpredictable meanness, ride along the storm front of love and trick you into believing that loving someone that hurts you is OK—and you don’t even know that’s what happens in your head—it’s crazy.

2. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: It’s always great to be the “apple of someone’s eye” even if they can’t know you well enough to really feel that way about you. The sense of idealization is almost intoxicating. Unfortunately, what is the price of idealization most of the time: making the other person equally perfect too. If you are better than great, changes are good you’re the latest mirror for your partner. They expect you to reflect how perfect they are, and if you fail to do that, you’ll pay a pretty price. So why do you stay? Because you ignore the reality that you never get to be yourself, and enjoy the thrill of being made perfect in someone’s eyes. And, you ignore the price of disappointing that special someone—because it’s crazy.

3. Booty-Call Love: This insanity is the pattern of the booty call. You are with someone that regularly rejects you—not usually in your face rejection, but more in the way they pick anything over you when given the choice. Sometimes their Facebook posts show them with someone on a date—but “Hey, that’s just a friend.” You begin to question yourself, even when it’s obvious that your person had sex with another person. Yet, at 2:00 a.m., the text ringtone goes off and you fling open your door (and your body) when they finally know you’re the real one. Of course, you’re just the only one left that night. How does a ratio of 10 rejections to 1 booty call equal love—because it’s crazy.

4. Absent with out Leaving: You feel alone in the room—you aren’t alone, but you might as well be. The anniversary comes and goes—no acknowledgement. You talk about how hard the day was, but there’s no response. The emptiness in the room overpowers you, yet you say to yourself “They come home everyday and sleep here every night. That means I’m loved.” Most of us, though, define love as caring about the other person, not simply filling the seat next to us on the bus. Yet, it seems as if your loneliness doesn’t tell you anything important—it’s crazy to want attention, right?

In our casual, social media driven, 140-character world, love is something we convince ourselves of (in our heads) much more than something we experience with someone else (in our hearts). If we demand too much, we are high maintenance. If we are upset by isolation, we are dramatic. We begin to believe these crazy ideas and think our pain isn’t real. As if feeling pain isn’t the pure definition of real pain.

If you value being important to someone else (not idealized by them) and want genuine connection, you’re not crazy. You might be rarer that you would have been 20 years ago, but you’re not crazy. Ask yourself this, “If I wrote the story of my life and wanted to convince folks that I mattered and had a fulfilling life, would this relationship fit into such a story?” If the answer is no, and yet you stay with the person, you have lost the ability to test reality. You forgot that what is real is what works over and over again—and if your relationship doesn’t fit what you value in relationships, then test the reality of your idea of love. If your love fails the test, don’t trick your