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When I was younger and naive, I always wanted someone who loved me so much that he didn’t want to live without me.

I thought all public acts of love were incredible displays of romance, and I always hoped that whoever I was with would want to be with me 24/7.

Like me, many women around the world think the same, even right now.

There are hundreds of articles that say how a healthy relationship means you have to be present for each other all the time, ask questions, share information, and overall show all the love you can so the other person feels loved and appreciated, especially in the “beginning of the relationship” to create trust and foundation.

Too much love, especially in the early stages, can be dangerous. We idealize someone we don’t know just because of what that person is doing for us at the moment, and we think everything is perfect, but we don’t really know his true personality.

And this can lead you to do crazy things for a love that does not exist.

Here, I will show you the story of the girl who donated her kidney for love, and it turned into a nightmare because she didn’t know the dangerous side of love bombing.

The story of Colleen Le, the girl who donated her kidney to her boyfriend who then cheated on her.

Collen Le is a Tiktoker that became popular for sharing the story of her relationship with his ex, who had a health condition that damaged both of his kidneys.

At the beginning of the relationship, he told her that he was probably going to die and to try to enjoy the time he had left. He also showed her the process he was undergoing to continue living with his damaged kidneys.

She talked about how the relationship was so good, his family loved her so much, and she was so in love that she decided to donate her kidney to him so he could live.

Since the disease was so advanced, she didn’t have enough time to process things; she just had a sense of urgency not to let the boy die and be able to continue her “perfect” relationship.

Nobody stopped her. His family cried with happiness every day, they treated her like a daughter for this great act of kindness, and her boyfriend loved her more every day as the process happened.

However, when everything happened, something changed.

Her boyfriend went to a bachelor party and cheated on her with a friend, and that made her lose all the trust she had in the relationship.

However, she felt that she had given too much for the relationship, so she decided to make things work even when he cheated on her; that’s how a toxic and difficult experience began. There was no trust, there were fights every day, and it was mentally exhausting for both of them.

Finally, he broke up with her and blocked her from all social networks because he felt drowned.

Why love bombing is so dangerous.

Excessive displays of love, especially at the beginning of a relationship, can be dangerous. It makes you idealize a person for what they are making you feel and not for what they are. And it can make you do crazy things that don’t make sense.

There is no way you could love someone so much you can give your life to that person in the first three months of dating; for that reason, if someone is showing you all this attention, gifts, and signs of love, it is probably not about you but about them trying to prove something to themselves.

In many sources, love bombing is described as a way of grooming to manipulate you and obtain something:

“When someone is love bombing, they’re doing so in order to mentally manipulate their new partner by distracting them from their character flaws, monopolizing their time and energy, establishing a toxic, unbalanced dynamic, and ultimately gaining control over their life. It can be thought of as a type of grooming: often innocuous-seeming in the beginning but with the expectation of getting something in return eventually.

Psychologists caution it might be a tactic used by a narcissist or sociopath in an attempt to control you.”

Many people tend to feel like love bombing is just a phase or that someone is really excited to know you and that it doesn’t really could negatively impact your life.

However, the problem with accepting this type of behavior (even if they are not doing it with harmful intentions) is that it prevents you from really knowing someone because you are completely distracted by their charm and gifts, and you can lose your time with a person you don’t really would want later.

Love bombing can be so dangerous that, even later, it can make you feel you need to keep forcing a relationship that doesn’t work because you want to keep the perfection that led you there.

Just like what happened to Collen when her boyfriend cheated, she was willing to keep working hard to make things work because she made a big sacrifice, but it was just damaging her more.

Excessive love and attention are not signals of a good relationship.

Collen Le was manipulated by her ex-boyfriend and his family to make her believe she was in a perfect relationship, and that caused her to make a decision based on the love and affection she was receiving (that she probably never got in other relationships).

Right now, she had to live with the consequences of giving a part of her to someone who didn’t care about her just because she felt he was the love of his life.

And that’s just because the world makes us feel love is about constant communication and affection.

In movies and books, love is about making significant sacrifices for the people we care about. We see how a man dies for the woman he loves just because he wants her to be happy or how people give up everything just to be with their soulmate.

We also idealize celebrity couples because they constantly show their love publicly on a social network with a great love message because we believe that love is showing our couples publicly to the world.

But the reality is that none of these things are realistic healthy relationships.

All of my toxic and manipulative relationships began with great unreal love affections. They sent me exotic gifts, took me to expensive restaurants to impress me, and constantly made me feel like I was the best thing in the world. Once I was trapped in the relationship, they started behaving like they really were.

However, my healthiest relationship began with getting to know each other slowly; there was no rush, no exotic surprises, no trips to the beach, no even “I love you” for months, just two people getting to know each other.

Because a real relationship is not about making huge sacrifices to be with the other person, and however who makes you feel you have to give up everything to be with them only wants to manipulate you.

Final thoughts

We are so used to seeing splendid public displays of love from movies and famous people and reading stories in books about how a person gave up everything just to be with the person they love that we believe a healthy relationship is about making great sacrifices for others.

We think someone doesn’t like us if they don’t text back quickly or post us on our social media, and we feel like from the first date, the other person has to act like you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to them, and we feel we need to give a lot and receive a lot to be with each other.

But that’s not real love.

A healthy relationship is about slowly getting to know each other with healthy passion until you realize this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.

Real love doesn’t want you to make sacrifices just to be with them, and if someone is pushing you to give up something you have for love, that’s destructive.