Stop Losing Yourself in Love: When Intensity Feels Like Intimacy
The Relationship Pattern That Made Me Confuse Intensity With Love
A Feng Shui Soul’s Mirror teacher once told me there was one Pig separating me from Woody Allen.
I am three pigs. Year, month, and day.
He is four.
What separates us, she said calmly, is my Horse hour.
At the time, I nodded as if I understood something profound about destiny. In reality, she wasn’t talking about luck or fate. She was describing my relational pattern.
An open heart.
Loyalty to the last drop.
And an internal horse that pushes forward, seeks intensity, and mistakes emotional acceleration for alignment.
It would take me years to understand what she meant.
When Intensity Feels Like Love
Recently, while everyone was celebrating the Year of the Horse, I found myself scrolling through old photos. One image stopped me.
Cabo.
Me on a horse. Hair flying. Body leaning forward. Looking fearless.
That same weekend, in an adults-only resort where I had escaped a painful relationship, I finished writing UnAddicted to You, my book about love addiction.
The irony was almost too precise.
What the photo does not reveal is that I was in the dark.
The relationship I was in looked extraordinary from the outside. It generated admiration, envy, and the kind of “goals” comments that social media rewards. But internally, it was a cycle of extreme highs and equally extreme lows.
Excitement. Collapse. Reunion. Collapse again.
Our nervous systems can easily interpret that biochemical roller coaster as passion. Adrenaline and cortisol heighten attachment. Intensity can feel like intimacy. Drama can feel like depth.
But they are not the same.
The Subtle Ways We Lose Ourselves in Relationships
I did not lose myself in one dramatic betrayal.
I lost myself through small agreements.
Through silence.
Through minimizing my intuition.
Through adjusting my boundaries so the relationship could survive.
I teach love for a living. I analyze relationship patterns. I help individuals and couples build emotional safety and conscious communication. Yet intellectual awareness does not automatically protect you from living your own patterns.
Losing yourself in love rarely feels catastrophic in the moment. It feels like compromise. It feels like devotion. It feels like staying committed.
Until you wake up and realize your identity has quietly shifted around someone else’s emotional volatility.
The Year of the Horse: Power or Self-Abandonment?
The Year of the Horse is often associated with boldness, passion, and movement. But power without self-awareness easily becomes self-abandonment.
Fire can warm you.
Fire can consume you.
The real question is not whether you love intensely. The question is whether you remain intact while you do.
Are you holding the reins in your relationship?
Or are you being carried by chemistry, fear of loss, and nervous system highs?
How to Stop Losing Yourself in Love
Recognizing the pattern is the first step.
Rebuilding self-trust is the next.
If you find yourself:
• Confusing intensity with intimacy
• Calling chemistry destiny
• Shrinking to maintain connection
• Feeling powerful in public but small in private
You are not alone. And this is not about shame. It is about awareness.
I created Stop Losing Yourself in Love for exactly this intersection between passion and self-abandonment.
It is not about loving less.
It is about loving without disappearing.
You can learn more here:
https://dretelleit.com/Stop-Losing-Yourself-in-Love
Final Reflection
That photo in Cabo did not capture freedom. It captured a woman in motion who had not yet learned to hold her own reins.
The Year of the Horse is not about running faster.
It is about riding with awareness.
Love & Light,
Dr. Etel Leit
Your LOVE Doctor
