Are you a highly sensitive person? Have you ever felt that your love for your partner was greater than you perceive their love to be for you?

First off, what is an HSP? A Highly Sensitive Person. VerywellMind.com defines it as:

“someone who is thought to have an increased or deeper central nervous system sensitivity to physical, emotional, or social stimuli. Some refer to this as having sensory processing sensitivity.”

In other words, we feel things to an intensely sensitive degree, especially emotions. It’s also possible that an HSP person is someone high in Neuroticism in the Big 5 Personality Traits. The Big 5 traits can be remembered by the acronym OCEAN.

• Openness to experiences
• Conscientiousness
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism.

Neuroticism is defined on VerywellMind.com as:

“characterized by sadness, moodiness, and emotional instability.1 Individuals who are high in neuroticism tend to experience mood swings, anxiety, irritability, and sadness”

What this means when all is said and done is that empathy is strong. I will feel for fictional characters as though they were real people. I will love them and grieve their deaths. When I am with my husband, I feel our love so intensely, sometimes it’s very elating.

Does this mean he doesn’t love me as much as I love him? Not at all.

It just means I am more connected to my emotions and can put words to what I feel more easily, and even when I cannot, I feel it more intensely than most people would.

There is a downside to this, however. 

Continue reading Highly Sensitive Love, which was written exclusively for the Publication What Is Love To You? on Medium.

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