Reverse L’Oreal Syndrome

Anna is desperate for love; yet she pushes away those who ever try to love her. Anna is so insecure that she needs to put those who love her to test, push them to their limits to see how they will respond.

When she gets in fights with her boyfriend, Alex, she tells him ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ Then she will not answer his phone calls for three days and let him worry sick about her. But all this time she is hanging by her phone to see how many times he’s called her and how many messages and voice mails he has left to apologise.

When Alex says something that pisses her off, she will run away and let him chase after her in the busy shopping mall. One time she even hid in the ladies’ toilets for a while but then she got worried that he wouldn’t be able to find her, so she came out and stood where it was easier to find her.

When she wants something, she makes sure that he goes out of his way and move mountains to get it for her. Alex lined up overnight in front of HMV to get the concert tickets she really wanted, but she just dismissed them and put them on the table when he produced the tickets hoping it would bring a surprised and pleased smile to her face.

But despite all Alex’s efforts, who proved again and again that he loves her to bits, she is still uncomfortable to let herself just simply be loved. She makes a drama out of everything and makes herself into a selfish difficult person so if one day he packs his bags and go, there will be a valid reason for that and it might hurt less. If there is any hint that the relationship is getting a bit edgy she will convince herself that she didn’t really love him that much anyway and she can easily move on if it didn’t work out. She believes that it is better to break his heart than live with a broken heart. She wants to make sure that Alex loves her more than she loves him, that it will only ever be that she leaves him and not vice versa because she is terrified of losing.

Anna has a disease. It is called Reverse L’Oreal Syndrome – “Because I’m not worth it”.

***Photography by bgorsphotography

**The term Reverse L’Oreal Syndrome comes from the novel, A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah