Empaths love differently. They are not capable of seeing love as transient. They do not understand how love can change or disappear altogether. For an empath, love is sacred, and love is eternal. Empaths have a suspicion that love isn’t experienced this way for others—that for others, love isn’t a matter of loyalty, but expediency. Who is available to be with me at this time? is not a question that crosses the empath’s mind. They cannot conceive of love being a matter of here-and-nowness. For empaths, love is always transcendent, and what is transcendent will always be eternal.

To empaths, love is an unshakable bond that can’t be replaced or mimicked or undone. It isn’t just a roughly drafted screenplay with characters who could be recast at the beckoning of a bored director. Empaths aren’t like others, the ones that can pick themselves up after the end of a relationship and just move on with their lives.

For empaths, every person they have ever met has left an energetic mark on their psyche, seeping into their heart and their mind. They absorb others into their very souls. They learn to live with thousands of energetic imprints; they carry the emotional memory of every person they have ever met. And when it comes to love, this is magnified. When an empath opens their heart to love, they are completely consumed by every moment, on an energetic level. Whether they are conscious of it or not, they are embedding the energy of the other person into them so completely that there will never be separation again.

Empaths love between infinite bounds. Empaths, in a certain sense, are the embodiment of love. There is no possibility of “unloving” when it comes to an empath. And so, it is no mystery why empaths are completely destroyed by the very thing they are.

Love is the empath’s fatal flaw. When empath’s lose someone they love, they lose more than pieces of the past or dreams of the future. They feel an existential loss of their own souls, a quickening of the tectonic plates within their own minds. They can’t rationalize loss. To them, love and loss cannot coexist. Empaths are absolutely crippled by the grief of loss, beholden to the people from their past. 

Empaths are far too fragile for love. Even the sweetest kind poisons them. They can’t handle the ecstasy of it or the horror of it. And of course, no one would ever know the way love consumes them. To others, empaths are far too independent, far too aloof, far too ethereal. They think empaths don’t need love. And they are right—they don’t need love, they need to be kept as far away from it as possible. Intuitively, this is clear to empaths. They know love overtakes them, and they are always filled to the brim with it. Empaths are filled with love by seeing every leaf on every tree, every smile on a passing face.

Empaths are terrified of love. And so, they insist on independence, and they end up alone. “Alone” shouldn’t be a dirty word for empaths. An empath alone is an empath who has a chance of surviving in their hyper-intuitive world.