Emophilia: the Art of Falling in Love with Everyone You Meet
Don’t worry though – it’s not a condition where you adopt emo fashion and music taste, or an STI. It’s something far less horrible, but still something you need to be aware of and know how to manage.
What is emophilia in dating?
Emophilia is an art (or a curse?) of falling in love instantly and far too often. It is essentially emotional promiscuity where you grow passionate about your lovers and dates over a very short period of time.
For example, you can meet someone, and one or two dates later you’re already believing that you guys are kindred spirits that belong together. In reality, though, you might not even be a good match, just two people who are great at flirting and having a good time together.
What causes emophilia? Emophilia vs anxious attachment
While there may be multiple reasons why someone develops emophilia syndrome, it’s often believed to be a result of anxious attachment.
With anxious attachment, people have a burning need to be in love and be loved. Whether it comes from a poor relationship with caregivers, or it’s a learned behavior from previous dating experience, anxious attachment makes one strive to love another person and get a constant reassurance of their love and validation for themselves.
Emophilia and anxious attachment are not the same, but there are many intersections. Someone with emophilia can fall in love more often and quicker than a person with anxious attachment, but they’re both able to develop an obsession over them. A person with emophilia with obsess over their lover in general, and anxious attachment will push them to obsess over not being good enough and trying to make up for it.
Emophilia makes you excited and happy about the relationship, while anxious attachment pushes you to the dark side of stress and worrying pretty much from the start.
Lastly, you’re more likely to build a healthy relationship with emophilia than with anxious attachment, although they’re both questionable and can be a sign of something bad coming for your couple in the future.
Is emophilia good or bad?
Technically, there is nothing wrong with falling for many people in your life. All the excitement, pleasure, and anticipation of the next tet-a-tet make life fun and distract us from the burdens of adulthood. It’s like a loop of the honeymoon phase in dating, just with tons of different partners.
It can be a problem though if you become overly obsessed with every crush to the point where you neglect your own interests, goals, and relationship boundaries. If you come across an abusive partner or someone with toxic tendencies, they’ll start profiting from the perceived emotional bond on your side, creating an unhealthy dynamic that will leave you not just heartbroken, but with a relationship trauma that will take lots of time and effort to recover from. Another risk of emophilia is that while seeking excitement and intense feelings, a person will build shallow connections with their partners, and fall for their projections and not the actual person they’re dating.
While it is great to fall for someone quickly, taking your time and doing slow dating has many benefits too. First of all, you’ll know them long enough to spot any pink flags that will be missed if you jump right into it and never look back. All we really want from dating is to find someone we can have genuine emotional intimacy with, right? Emophilia, sadly, stands in the way of that, unless you’re incredibly lucky and end up falling for the right person by accident.
How to stop emophilia
So what if the Once team convinced you to drop emophilia from your mindful dating arsenal? How do you actually cure your emophilia addiction? Worry not! We’re here to help, and we brought excellent tips.
Tip #1: Get a life!
No, seriously. One of the undeniable perks of emophilia is that you have a purpose, a desire, and a passion that drives you. Hyper-fixing on someone makes you almost manic, giving you endless energy streams that power your daily life.
It’s a tricky situation though because once you've fallen out of love (or obsession), nothing feels that good really, and you’re likely to go back to living a couch potato life. Finding a hobby, a side hustle, or a cause that would take up your time and help you feel fulfilled will mitigate emophilia withdrawal.
For the record – we’re not saying that you should fill every waking second with something to do, but definitely look at your schedule with a critical eye and see how you can make your weeks and months more meaningful.
Tip #2: Create a portrait and make a list
Put on a marketing researcher hat, and come up with your desired target audience portrait. You wouldn’t go car shopping on a whim, right? First, you’d sit down and make a list of criteria and show stoppers for your potential vehicle. The same should apply to dating. Once you actually understand who you’re looking for, you’ll have less trouble navigating the complex dating market and will be able to end those dating chats that don’t serve you.
Here are a few questions that will help you build a well-rounded portrait of your perfect candidate:
- What are my future partner’s green flags?
- What are the red flags (pink too) that I can’t ignore?
- What is non-negotiable? For instance, them wanting kids or being open to living abroad.
- What’s their appearance? Side note: don’t get too focused on the looks, but don’t ignore or feel bad about having a type either.
Tip #3: Listen to your friends and family
There’s nothing worse than unsolicited advice, except falling for and getting hurt by a person that everyone in your inner circle warned you about.
Look, it’s annoying when you’re excited about someone, and your friends and family turn into a collective Debby Downer. But remember this – they’re in your life for a reason, and you trust them with (almost) everything, so why doubt their intuition now? You don’t have to break up as soon as someone criticizes your boyfriend or girlfriend, but they very well may have a point, so at least hear them out.
Tip #4: Become a reflecting king or queen
Something we can all do more often is be more mindful of our dating life and analyze who we date and how it makes us feel. You don’t have to create an Excel sheet or journal about every relationship you have (although, why not?), but a simple reflection session every once in a while, preferably in a quiet place with a cup of coffee or tea, will give you the space to understand yourself and your love life better.
Perhaps you’ll see that you are falling for the same type of person over and over again, or you’ll notice your own flaws and tendencies, such as sabotaging the relationship the minute things start to get serious. If you’re prone to emophilia, you’ll be able to see that pattern too. And once you are aware of something, you’re much more likely to deal with it accordingly.
