Love or illusion
On trauma bonding, projection and the loss of truth
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Introduction
What I had long mistaken for love has, in hindsight, turned out to be something else entirely: an illusion—fed by pain and longing. I believed that the intensity, the yearning, the highs and lows were proof of deep connection, but it was a bond that hollowed me out more than it fulfilled me. It wasn’t love, but the repetition of old wounds.
That realization is both painful and liberating. Painful, because it means I was not merely a victim of the dynamic, but also a participant: I stayed, I hoped and I kept giving myself away. Liberating, because truth releases me from the illusion. What is not love no longer needs to be sustained in love’s name.
The central question that has preoccupied me ever since is: What is love, truly? How can we distinguish between healthy love that nourishes and makes us grow, and unhealthy patterns that consume and deplete us? How do we recognize the illusions that stem from unmet childhood needs, from projections of pain and fear? And how can we move beyond that repetition—toward a form of love grounded in freedom, truth and reciprocity?
This essay is my attempt to explore those questions. It's not a purely theoretical reflection, but rather an existential account. I weave my own experiences together with insights from psychology and philosophy—not to universalize my story, but to expose the mechanisms that can hold many of us captive in destructive relationships. For what looks like love is sometimes nothing more than the echo of an old absence.
Intensity versus Love
There was a time when I believed that the fierceness of my feelings was proof of love. The yearning, the tension, the burning of desire — I thought that the very intensity showed how deep the bond was. Every high felt like a revelation, every low like an existential threat. It seemed as if my life only gained color in those extremes, as if the emptiness was finally being filled. But what I once mistook for love was, in truth, a prison.
Psychologically, this mechanism is known as trauma bonding. It arises when intense emotions — caused by cycles of closeness and withdrawal — alternately trigger pain and reward. The brain becomes addicted to this pattern: moments of warmth or affirmation seem all the more precious because they are repeatedly preceded by rejection, distance or chaos. The rollercoaster is mistaken for proof of connection, when in reality it is a form of conditioning. Love then ceases to be a source of safety and becomes a cycle of dependency.
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This misconception runs deep. When there has been a lack in childhood — a shortage of stability, safety, or unconditional love — intensity can later be confused with intimacy. The longing for the parent who was not always there translates into the longing for the partner who is inconsistently present. The child who once hoped the parent would return lives on in the adult who believes the partner’s warmth will follow every act of withdrawal.
Philosophically, this distinction touches on an ancient debate about the nature of love. Plato spoke of eros as a desire born from lack: the human being seeks in the other what is missing within themselves. Eros is passionate, intense, but also restless — always driven by what is absent. Opposed to this stands agapè: love as giving, as the unconditional recognition of the other as they are. Agapè does not flare up and fade away, but is rooted in stability and reciprocity.
For years, my relationship made me believe that eros was the highest form of love — that its intensity proved it was meant to be. Only later did I see that it was not love, but the repetition of an old deprivation. The alternation between closeness and distance, between validation and rejection, had made me addicted to an illusion. True love, I now realize, is not about intensity but about safety. It does not need to soar and crash to be real — its power lies precisely in the calm with which it allows the soul to grow.
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Projection of unfulfilled needs
What I kept experiencing in the relationship was how my own unfulfilled longings became entangled with the other person. The emptiness from my childhood — the yearning for recognition and stability — found new soil in which to grow. I placed my deepest hopes in the hands of the one who simultaneously pulled me close and pushed me away. The need for safety made me blind to the signs of danger.
Psychologically, this is known as projection: the unconscious act of attributing one’s own unmet needs to another. In my case, it meant that I saw the other as someone who could finally heal my sense of lack. When she said she felt worthless, it touched my own fear of not being enough. When she withdrew or made me wait, it reactivated my old experience of rejection. Instead of setting boundaries, I kept hoping that the pain would turn into closeness.
The diaries I kept at the time show this mechanism in unfiltered detail. I wrote about how I kept believing that “next time would be different.” In our messages I see myself constantly explaining, clarifying, defending — again and again hoping to be understood. In retrospect, it's clear that I was not really speaking to her, but to the echo of absence within myself.
Philosophically, this can be understood through the lens of Freud and Jung. Freud called it repetition compulsion: the tendency to unconsciously recreate earlier wounds in new relationships, in an attempt to rewrite the story and finally make it end well. Jung spoke of the shadow: the parts of ourselves we fail to integrate consciously and therefore encounter in others. Levinas, too, helps illuminate this: when the Other is reduced to a screen for my projections, she ceases to exist as truly Other. I no longer see who is really standing before me — only a mirror of my own lack.
The most painful realization is that this projection sustained the illusion of love. I believed I was loving the other, but in truth I was trying to fill my own emptiness through her. What I received was not love, but a repetition of old pain. Acknowledging this mechanism is confronting, but also liberating. For only when I see and carry my own wounds, can I stop placing them in someone else’s hands.
True love begins where projection ends. It asks for an encounter between two people who do not use each other as extensions or mirrors, but recognize one another as distinct beings. Only then does love become more than intensity or repetition — it becomes a genuine dialogue, where the aim is not the illusion of wholeness, but the lived truth of reciprocity.
Love as truth or deception
One of the most confusing experiences in the relationship was the realization that truth never seemed to have a fixed place. What was said one day was denied the next. Promises were made and then withdrawn. When I tried to hold on to my memory of events, I was told that I had misunderstood. The most devastating part was not the arguments themselves, but the slow erosion of my sense of reality.
Psychologically, this is known as gaslighting: the systematic undermining of someone’s perception by sowing doubt about their memory, feelings or observations. Its effects are subtle yet profound. You begin to trust your intuition less and less, rewriting events in your mind in search of logic where none exists. A permanent state of uncertainty takes hold, and you lose your grip on what is real.
In my diaries, I can see how this worked. I wrote, for example, about waiting three hours for her while she had fallen asleep — and how, the next morning, she acted as if nothing had happened. No apology, no acknowledgment. The incident itself was painful, but the denial made it unbearable: it was as though my experience had been erased. In our messages, I see the same pattern — half-truths, twisted words, silences designed to destabilize me. Without my notes, I might have convinced myself that it hadn’t really been that bad.
Philosophically, this touches on the question of what truth means within a relationship. Hannah Arendt saw truth as something both public and fragile: it cannot be imposed but exists only through mutual acknowledgment. In intimate relationships, this means that truth must be shared for love to endure. When the other denies truth, not only the factual basis is destroyed but also the ethical foundation of the relationship. Martin Buber spoke of the I–Thou relation: recognizing the other as a subject, through truth and reciprocity. Gaslighting annihilates exactly that, because it turns the other into an object of manipulation — stripped of their own reality.
What struck me most was how long I kept insisting that this was love, even as deception formed its core. I clung to the illusion as if admitting the truth would mean losing everything. But only by naming the lie did freedom begin. For love built on falsehood is not love, but theater.
Real love can exist only where truth is shared. Not perfect truth — we are all fallible — but the willingness to remain honest, even when it is uncomfortable. Truth is the fragile ground upon which love takes root. When that ground is eroded by lies or gaslighting, what remains is merely a façade. Recognizing that difference, however painful, is the first act of genuine love — for oneself.
The ethics of Love
After the breakup, one question kept echoing within me: if what I had experienced was not love, then what is love? The answer revealed itself not only through my own reflections but also in the words of Erich Fromm. In The Art of Loving, he describes love not as a feeling that simply befalls us, but as an act — an ethical choice that demands responsibility, care, respect and knowledge.
Love, according to Fromm, is not a passive surrender to passion, but an active force that we cultivate, practice and embody. That realization exposed a painful contrast. In my relationship, responsibility and care were often absent — or present only on one side.
I carried the burdens, I waited, I stretched my boundaries. What I perceived as reciprocity was, in truth, dependency. Where Fromm describes love as a deed of care for the other’s well-being, I saw how the other primarily sought care for herself — and how I provided it at the expense of my own integrity.
Fromm emphasizes that love cannot exist without respect: the recognition of the other as they truly are, without reducing them to an object or projection. In my relationship, precisely that was missing. I was reduced to a function — the rescuer, the reassurer, the safe harbor. And I did the same in return: I made her into the mirror of my unfulfilled needs. Thus, the possibility of true encounter disappeared. Respect requires that you see the other in their distinctness, not as someone meant to fill your emptiness.
What struck me most in Fromm’s words was his idea of knowledge: to truly love, one must know the other as they are. That demands truth, openness and the willingness to see what is painful as well. Love that refuses to face truth turns into deception and performance. That was precisely what made gaslighting so destructive — truth was not shared but denied. And without shared truth, love becomes impossible.
In Fromm’s ethics, I find an anchor: love as an act means that I must take responsibility not only for the other but also for myself. That I must care for my own boundaries, my truth, my healing. Love that only gives without preserving itself turns into self-negation.
Love that only takes without giving becomes exploitation. Only where care, respect, responsibility and knowledge converge can there be genuine connection.
For me, this now means that I no longer love in order to fill an emptiness, but to make a true meeting possible. That I no longer seek love in the fever of intensity, but in the calm of reciprocity. It's a different path from the one I once knew — a path that requires practice and courage, but one no longer rooted in lack.
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Conclusion: Love beyond lack
Looking back, I see how the relationship I called love for so many years was in fact built upon lack. The intensity, the longing, the highs and lows were not proof of connection, but symptoms of a recurring wound. What I desired was not that person herself, but the fulfillment of an emptiness that had emerged in me long before.
The realization that this was not love has set me free. For as long as I called it love, I felt obliged to keep it alive — no matter how painful it became. Only when I dared to break through the illusion did space for healing appear. Love is not the fever of waiting, not the endless pleasing, nor the perpetual repetition of old traumas and patterns. Love begins where truth can be shared, where care and respect are mutual and where responsibility is carried by two rather than one.
Yet this insight reaches further than my personal story. We live in a culture that often confuses intensity with love. Our world of romantic ideals — in films, music, and social media — glorifies tension, obsession and total surrender. Love is portrayed as something that happens to us, an unstoppable force to which we must yield. In doing so, unhealthy patterns are frequently normalized: jealousy is called passion, obsession becomes romance and dependency becomes loyalty.
That cultural illusion reinforces the personal one. Those who grew up with emotional scarcity find in such ideals confirmation — proof that pain and longing indeed bear the name of love. In this way, the repetition of trauma remains invisible, even legitimized.
Only by exposing this illusion can we free ourselves from the misunderstanding of love that holds so many people captive.
For me, love beyond lack begins with a different orientation: not being with someone to fill my emptiness, but learning to stand in wholeness and truth myself. Love is not the illusion of fusion, but the reality of encounter. It asks that I carry myself — so that I may truly see the other.
This is not a romantic fairytale, but an ethical path. A path that requires courage, because it demands farewell to the familiar intensity of illusion. But it is also a path that brings freedom: the freedom to love without being imprisoned, to be connected without losing oneself and to live in truth without fearing that love will disappear because of it.
