Blind Love: when you Don't See who they really Are

There are times when you end up loving someone infinitely. What that means is that you see the other person as perfect, and you have a deep admiration for them. You marvel at everything they do, and they end up becoming a basic need in your life. But that might make you feel like without that person, you’re nothing.

This is how you can sometimes end up loving someone so much that you can’t see who they really are. What you’ve done is made a kind of distorted reflection of them in your mind. This is what we mean when we say blind love. It’s the kind where you idealize the person you love and would give anything for them. But that usually means forgetting about yourself. In this article we’re going to tell you what that kind of love can be like, specifically with a partner.

Blind love: when you idealize the person you love

You can’t always see the person you’re with for who they really are. That blind love sometimes comes from idealization. In other words, you think the person you love is perfect, and you might even forget their “human side.” You exaggerate all their good qualities and stop valuing your own, so that you can say they’re perfect. You end up feeling good because you’re with such an incredible, impossibly great person.

Sigmund Freud said that idealization involved overestimating someone, whether consciously or unconsciously. He also said that it’s a defense mechanism. In other words, it’s something you use to reassure yourself about something that bothers you. That’s why you make the other person so valuable: it’s to help you with your own negative feelings.

Another side effect of this defense mechanism is that you cover up some of your own needs. You stop feeling lonely or unmotivated because you see the other person as a complement. So your love for them ends up making up for everything you were missing. But i dealization doesn’t mean physically being with someone. It’s about overvaluing the person you love, whether they’re your partner or not.

Blind love: loving at all costs

Idealizing the other person, along with undervaluing yourself, leads a lot of people to rely too much on their relationships. This absolute reliance might end up wearing the other person out. Or, if they’re more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it might just make their twisted plans easier to accomplish.

When you rely completely on other people and put yourself at the bottom of the food chain, you end up being completely unprotected. If you’re lucky, nothing bad will happen. But if you cross paths with someone who doesn’t have good intentions, it might have terrible consequences for you. You’ll never worry about who you are and who you want to be (or what you want to do) because you live for the other person. That’s true even when they have different interests. You end up pushing aside everything you want and just do everything they say.

When I love you more than you love me

This kind of blind love is easy to sum up in one sentence: “You’re more important to me than I am to you.” To put it another way, it causes a lot of imbalance when the person you love always comes first. Here are some of the consequences that might come up in these kinds of situations:

• Forgetting who you are.
• Letting the other person walk all over you. 
• Letting your self-esteem go down.
• Not knowing what to do if the other person isn’t around.
• Living the other person’s life, not your own. 

These are all things that might happen when you put the other person above you. But a lot of the time putting them above you isn’t a conscious decision, or something you want. This usually means you don’t know how to say no to impossible things the other person asks you to do. It might happen because of how important the other person is to you, or because they just ask constantly. Or it might even just be that you aren’t able to respond the way you should.

I’m in love with love

Blind love can also happen when you’re too in love with love. What do we mean by that? It’s when you have the idea in your head that love is the most wonderful thing out there. It means you want to be in love so badly that you don’t pay attention to any of the most important questions. What kind of love? With who? In what circumstances?

When you’re in love with love, it might not even really matter to you who you’re with. It’s all the same, because you’re basically just going to create your own image of them that lines up with what you want. In other words, you’ll try to be in a relationship at any cost, because you think it’s the only way to find love, and have this thing you want so, so badly.

You get so caught up focusing on your expectations of the love you dream about that you don’t pay attention to who the other person really is. You start to imagine all kinds of things, and they all seem amazing. But the fact that you’re engaging with the fantasy ends up making it even bigger. At least until the bubble breaks. That’s when you have to open your eyes, which is always uncomfortable and painful.

In this case you’re not idealizing the person, you’re idealizing love. All you want is to do things that people do when they’re in love. But it gets to such a point that it harms your self-esteem. So, in an indirect way, these are the times when looking for love under that umbrella is nothing but a logical way of holding onto, or improving the image you have of yourself.

But when you stop seeing who the other person really is, you could be losing an opportunity to have an authentic relationship. You focus so much on your idea of love that you never make room to think about what they want. You never let every new moment surprise you, and you never live in the present. So when you put being in love on a pedestal, what you’re doing is forgetting about yourself, and them. All you care about is making that magical blind love a reality. But it’s a love as comforting as it is dangerous, because it’s completely unreal.

Loving without going blind

Not all love is blind, so here are some ideas for loving without the bandages on your eyes:

• Have a deep connection with yourself. This means putting time into working on what you’re focused on, and your internal monologue. That way you won’t forget that you’re important and unique to the people who love you. You’ll also be able to truly love someone else, not just a blank slate your imagination fills in however it wants.
• Set limits. This is about being clear about what you want, and expressing that to your partner. It means being assertive.
• It’s important to recognize that the other person has strengths and weaknesses. Don’t objectify your partner. We all have good and bad qualities.
• Don’t try to do more than you can. Give as much as you can, without overdoing it. Loving someone else doesn’t mean sacrificing everything you have.
• Leaving behind your own life should never be an option. It’s possible to love someone without neglecting yourself.
• Work on yourself so you’ll have something to offer them. When you love yourself, and know yourself, you’ll be able to be your best self. In an indirect way, you’ll also be the best you can be for them.

Loving doesn’t make you blind. It’s just that sometimes we end up letting ourselves get blinded by it. In other words, we put the bandages on ourselves. We’re the ones who ignore what the relationship is really like for them, and for us. That also means that we’re the ones who can turn things around. So, if you want to know if you’re blindly in love, connect with yourself. Be honest with yourself too, because the answer is inside you.