When a relationship ends despite your best efforts to make it work, you might think “I just wanted to be loved.” Perhaps you even convince yourself that you’re not meant for the love you’re seeking. You may even start to feel that relationships never work out for you, and no matter how much you pour into them, you always come out empty-handed.
If this pattern holds true for most of your relationships, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve healthy love. Instead, you may be replaying certain relational patterns that land you the same outcome each time.
More often than not, we mistake familiar pain for love. This is often a childhood dynamic that follows you into adult relationships. With each cycle of seeking love and failing to get it in your life, you might notice that what you’ve been drawn to isn’t a form of love after all.
Here are three red flags we tend to misinterpret and romanticize as love, and how to identify them.
1. You Mistake Emotional Intensity For Passion
Emotional intensity in dysfunctional relationships manifests as extreme lows followed by extreme highs. You may experience intense feelings and a preoccupation with your partner that borders on obsession, or may be drawn to partners who feel this way about you.
In such a dynamic, every fight threatens to break your relationship, shake your foundation and make you question your self-worth, but every make-up comes with the certainty of forever — a mindset where you believe love will win it all no matter how hard it gets.
In such relationships, it’s hard to find your footing or make space for what matters because you’re always on damage control. You forget that true love offers safety without unrealistic expectations, acceptance without conditions and validation without needing to earn it.
Individuals with an anxious attachment style are especially prone to this dynamic, as emotional inconsistency can magnify their longing. This is where people often mistake unpredictability for love.
A 2018 study published in Interpersona investigated the link between emotional intensity and romantic feelings in 80 young adults. It found that moderate stress in romantic relationships can heighten romantic feelings, creating a cycle where instability feels more compelling than peace. In contrast, feelings decreased under both low and high levels of stress.
The next time you are ruminating about your relationship, ask yourself, “Is this really pushing me toward connection or am I just addicted to intensity?”
2. You Are Chasing Validation, Not Love
When you’re stuck in a romanticizing pattern, you often chase validation instead of love. What drives you — often unconsciously — is the belief that, “If I can finally get this person to love me, then I’ll be worthy.”
You seek their validation because, deep down, you may believe, “I am not enough” — a belief that likely formed in childhood when your needs were dismissed or you were seen as too demanding.
This internalized shame shows up in relationships as striving for approval, blaming yourself when things go wrong and surrendering your agency to avoid rejection.
You don’t look for someone who gets you — you look for someone to save you from addressing the aspects of yourself that you are too embarrassed to look at.
A 2019 study published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology concluded that emotional neglect was associated with reduced oxytocin levels and insecure attachment patterns which collectively predicted higher social fear and avoidance.
That is, when your need for safety is not met, it can impact you at both physiological and psychological levels, fueling the need to gain validation, avoid confrontation and re-establish a sense of safety.
So, in relationships, whenever you catch yourself overdoing it — trying too hard to show your worth or overperforming for others — it’s not love you may be seeking, but validation.
Ask yourself, “Do I really want this person to love me or do I just need them to see me — so I can finally feel worthy of loving myself?”
3. You Are Mistaking Control For Security
When people think of security in love, they think of someone they can rely on in times of need. Someone who can take the wheel from them when they are too tired to drive, take over household responsibilities while they rest or support them through a difficult time.
Emotionally, it’s the equivalent of them drawing a blanket over you as you sleep. You know with certainty that they’re there for you. That’s what security looks like for most — the sense that no matter what life throws at them, they won’t be facing it alone.
That’s often not the case when you end up romanticizing control as security. These dynamics look subtle. It could be your partner:
- Telling you to dress a certain way because they care how others see you.
- Making negative comments about your friends and family.
- Undermining you in front of others under the guise of joking.
- Picking fights just after or before you do something for yourself.
- Making you feel guilty for spending time away from them.
- Love bombing you, followed by silent treatment.
You may mistakenly start to believe that such signs of manipulation are care.
A 2016 study published in Sex Roles investigated how certain romantic beliefs — such as idealizing love at all costs, viewing jealousy as a sign of commitment or believing that romantic relationships should be intensely emotional — are related to the tendency to romanticize controlling behaviors.
The researchers surveyed 275 heterosexual women aged 18 to 50 and found that women who endorsed these beliefs were significantly more likely to view controlling behaviors (such as jealousy, possessiveness or making decisions for the partner) as romantic. This romanticization, in turn, was related to higher reported rates of both psychological and physical intimate partner violence.
Instead of acknowledging these red flags, people may interpret them as signs of love. What feels like security may, in fact, be the normalization of control.
When you’re torn between love and what’s right, ask yourself, “If my closest friend were going through this, would I still think it’s okay?”
When you recognize that you may have been romanticizing red flags all along, you can finally begin to choose a connection that feels safe, steady and real.
Want to know if control dynamics are shaping your relationship? Take this science-backed test to find out: Relationship Control Scale
