It just seems to me that people around me universally fall into that mindset when they are in love, at least 80% of them. From teenagers to people older than me, they just all seem to share two things in common: they hate seeing their partner remotely around a person of the opposite sex, and they don’t do private space. A few example are:

- A person who forced her boyfriend to promise never to have contact with any girl, then got mad when he was talking to a girl who came to ask for a job in his workplace, while he was the interviewer. This resulted in him being cold and rude to everyone who isn’t his girlfriend, even people older than him.
– A person who calls her boyfriend all the time, whenever she is in the mood, disregarding the fact that her boyfriend has a demanding night job and has to sleep in the morning. She often gets upset when she fails to call him in the morning.
– A young guy who wants to know every movement of his girlfriend and gets mad when she fails to text him where she is or reply to his message.
– A person who wants to be the one with the final say on their breakup, even though she no longer feels affection around him. Her reasoning is that she wants to be the one to have control in romantic relationships and likes to see the man being the one to have more affection than the woman.
– People who get angry with their partners for days over trivial things. This is actually a popular one and is regularly portrayed in the media.

I can never understand how anyone can consider those kinds of behavior normal, or even love at all. To me these are just controlling and abusive behavior conflated with “love”, and to be frank, I’m quite disgusted by that. But I have never fallen in love before. My opinion is based on my trauma of being abused with similar methods and my relationship with people here on Fluther. I’ve had someone tell me that these are just normal behavior in a romantic relationship and that indicates that the love is strong. Is that true? Will I inevitably fall into the same behavior if I am to love someone? I have made a promise to myself that I will never subject my loved one to those kinds of behavior and I will never tolerate my partner doing so to me, but is that a realistic thing to expect?