Our topic: It’s Safe to Love – Overcoming the fear of Love and Intimacy
This pattern is described quite thoroughly in Phyllis Light’s book, “Love Now, Here’s How”. The following are excerpted from her book.
Common Signs that you have this pattern:
Avoiding relationships/not wanting to get involved
Feeling abused/attracting abusive partners
Leaving relationships when they get too good
Feeling as if you’re going to die because you are in a loving relationship
Feeling as if you aren’t okay in others’ eyes, and therefore not allowing them to be nice, kind or loving to you
Avoiding or finding fault with someone who is interested in you
Pushing away a man/woman who loves you
Feeling as if you can’t have love here, and therefore you resist getting to know people who are kind and loving to you
Maintaining long distance relationships or relationships with unavailable partners
Not wanting to settle down with one person
Avoiding intimacy in relationships
Being unable to be intimate with your partner (or vice versa)
Creating superficial relationships
Being a bachelor or loner
How did this pattern come about and how does it tend to operate in your life?
This pattern clearly keeps relationships from working out for you. You might have a fear of love if the love you experienced as a child was mingled with threats to your safety in some way. For example, if your parents physically, mentally or emotionally abused you, and that was your first experience of love, understandably, you may fear love or prefer to live without it.
If your parents were overbearing, unreasonably demanding, or frequently made you do things you really didn’t want to do, you may have felt overburdened, overpowered, or suffocated by love. If such was the case, you are probably inclined to resist love in any form.
The problem is that because of your negative programming about love, you are convinced that love is to be avoided at all costs. You are not truly open to creating a loving relationship with another because you are so fearful of the consequences of being that close to someone again. Your early experiences with “loving” relationships taught you to stay away from them, as a way to ensure your survival and sanity.
With this pattern you also may avoid people who treat you kindly and lovingly, because you are so accustomed to being treated poorly by the ones who “loved” you as a child, and the positive attention is totally unfamiliar. You may find yourself choosing pain over pleasure again and again, because the mind always gravitates toward the familiar. Your “inner computer” is “wired” to continually attract the poor, neglectful, unloving, abusive or smothering treatment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment