Anais Nin wrote this in her diary, between 1947-1955 (it was later published in Volume 5 of her diaries)…”Anxiety is love’s greatest killer”.
The next bit of the quote:
“It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”
And so anxiety doesn’t so much kill love. Love drops the anxious and moves on to sturdier ground. The anxious are left to fend for themselves.
Which is one of life’s cruelest ironies: the very people who need help, push it away at precisely the time they need it the most.
I’ve had many years alone to wonder why humans would evolve this way.