I have met people who have sworn off love. Their motto is "no more heartbreak for me, I am fine alone, and I will never get hurt again." Well that may be fine for a while, but do we really want to avoid love forever and be alone for the rest of our lives?
I am a true believer in self love and living my life fully in the present, with or without a partner. But to reject the possibility of falling in love, or deciding not to love because I expect to get hurt, or avoiding connection with another in order to avoid pain. Well not me.
I have lost many things in life. My mother, my daughter (at one stage), loving relationships, my marriage and friends. This list could go on and on. However loving these special people that came into my life and then subsequently losing them, has taught me how to love more deeply. I have learnt how to love more completely and unconditionally with fewer expectations. The life I have now and the woman I am today is mostly due to my losses and the way I moved through them. In spite of what I have lost, I am ready, willing, eager, and able to love again.
I have seen what people lose when they are too afraid to love. These people don't come right out and say they will never fall in love again, but I can read it in their words and actions. These are the people who will not date until they are ready. People who set rigid and unrealistic standards for potential partners. People who live such hectic lives and are just so busy, that they cannot find time to meet potential partners. People who have been betrayed, hurt or rejected and cannot get past the pain. People who don't trust themselves not to make the same mistakes over and over. People who believe they can control their life in order to protect themselves from loss. This is not control of one's life, this is fear controlling us.
These people live by expectations rather than an intention and these people also will not speak up about what their expectations are. This is fear running their lives, they are afraid to ask for what they need. Most of their waking hours are spent in 'protect' mode, as they nervously wait for someone the cross their boundaries, disappoint them, leave them, or not love them enough. They expect their loved ones to be predictable, their job to be the same, and their friends/lovers to remain unchangeable. These people expect to get hurt and the sad part is they usually do.
When we live with expectations like these, we suffer great losses even if we don't realise it. We lose new opportunities. We lose our sense of wonder and anticipation. We lose potential relationships. We lose our peace of mind. We lose trust in ourselves. We lose hope. We lose faith in other people. We lose optimism for the future. Inside the void left from these losses, fear creeps into our hearts and minds - our fear of being alone, unloved, disconnected, and dead inside. In trying to avoid loss, we lose more. We need to accept loss as a fact of life and move on through it. I know; this is easier said than done.
Perhaps you are afraid to reach out because no-one ever hugged you or dried you tears when you cried. Perhaps no-one ever loved you unconditionally. It could be that every relationship you have been in, has left you with a broken heart. We all fear losing love; it is only natural. Therefore my challenge is to recognise when my fear is so overwhelming that it is preventing me from loving again and to not allow my fear to stop me from finding real love. I know when fear is activated within me, I am in 'protect' mode, and I am not being authentic and true to myself, this in turn makes me angry at myself, because I know full well what I'm doing. Now I am learning to let go of the fear and move forward.
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© Janelle Coulton
