Highly Sensitive People in Love
Understanding the Intensity and Fear in Sensitive Love
Highly sensitive people, who can be introverts or extroverts, accept and offer love differently. Some fall in love harder; some avoid it altogether.
"In respect to falling in love, my research suggests that highly sensitive people do fall in love harder than others," says Dr Elaine Aron in The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You. But highly sensitive people don't fall in love indiscriminately, and are known to avoid it completely. "Highly sensitive people vary more than others in the kinds of arrangements they work out in [love], choosing being single more often than the general population, or firmer monogamy, or close relationships with friends and family members rather than romance."
Sensitive love: highly sensitive people love deeply
Feelings of overwhelming, intense love happen more often to highly sensitive people because they're more easily aroused by external and internal stimuli. "Arousal" in this case doesn't simply refer to sexual feelings; highly sensitive people are more sensitive to sounds, sights, and touches. Their nervous systems are fine-tuned and they're in touch with the moods of other people.
Why sensitive love is often rejected
When highly sensitive people reveal their intense love, they're often rejected. Their love can be too demanding, unrealistic, and smothering. Highly sensitive people may have "no real understanding of the loved one, only some impossible vision of perfection."
Dr Aron states that the intense feelings of highly sensitive people often have little to do with the person they love. This sensitive love is more about intense pent-up feelings that are finally allowed out. In this way, highly sensitive people are similar to introverts.
Sensitive love: understanding overwhelming love
Highly sensitive people tend towards two extremes in love: overly cautious or overly intense. Dr Aron reassures us that this is normal: many people, highly sensitive or not, do lean towards one extreme or the other. This is why fear of intimacy is common: most of us have been burned in love at one time or another.
The fact that highly sensitive people are easily aroused by their environment makes them more prone to falling in love. Research shows that when people – highly sensitive or not – are aroused, they're more likely to fall in love. Arousal includes more than a sexual state; it's emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual as well. "…we are more likely to be romantically attracted to someone else if we are aroused in any way, even from running in place or listening to a tape of a comedy monologue," says Dr Aron.
Sensitive love, highly sensitive people, & low self-esteem
Another reason that highly sensitive people may experience quick, intense love is low self-esteem. "Highly sensitive people are prone to low self-esteem because they are not their culture's ideal. Sometimes they consider themselves lucky if someone wants them at all." The fear of being alone can induce a highly sensitive person – or anyone at all – to fall in love when they otherwise wouldn't.
Highly sensitive people are more likely to have strong, healthy love relationships when they and their lovers understand and accept the nature of this personality type.
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