5 Reasons Women Are Secretly Afraid to Love
Love is the most glorious feeling in the Universe. Being in love makes you feel as though you are the most beautiful person in the world and life is working for you. You stand in the now and appreciate your surroundings with awe. But despite the healing and emotional benefits of love, many women are afraid to love again.
When You’re Not Afraid to Love, Everything is Right with the World
When you’re in love everything is right with the world. It’s a blissful feeling. It’s more than the feeling of happiness because it’s amplified by another person who feels the same and it makes the feeling of peace seem dull in comparison.
You get to experience that warm glow throughout your entire body, and your permanent smile belies a secret. The secret of love that nobody but that special one person shares. Your upright posture, the confidence it brings, the feeling that you are invincible in this relationship. People are friendly and flock to you because they want some of what you have.
When Love Falls Apart, It’s Like a Volcanic Eruption
But often, when your love life falls apart you go from feeling on top of the world to being buried well beneath the surface. There is devastation and a scar the size of a volcanic eruption that leaves a crater in your heart and your world.
So it’s no wonder that women don’t want to repeat this mountainous journey of roller-coaster emotions.
And because your beliefs are created by your most dominant or memorable emotions throughout life, you often adopt a narrative that includes:
- I’m over relationships
- There are no good guys out there
- There’s no match for me around
- Men aren’t trustworthy
- All men are the same
- Love hurts
- It’s not worth it
But love doesn’t hurt…. people hurt.
And this is what women are afraid of the most.
Here are 5 Reasons Women are Secretly Afraid to Love
1. Lack of Trust – Letting Somebody Get Close
How does the saying go? Once hurt, twice shy? And it makes sense. If you touched boiling water, you would think twice about touching it again because it hurts. So this is a natural protection mechanism that our body uses to stop us from feeling pain. The only problem with this automatic pain valve is that our brain doesn’t know whether it’s physical or an emotional pain. It just lumps it all into the same bag. So unless we challenge our thoughts, they are an automatic response, programmed by the subconscious mind. So, you might be responding on automatic from past data to a new relationship that doesn’t even have the same threat.
2. Committing to a Relationship
When you’ve been stuck in a toxic relationship in the past, it can be difficult to even get close to that same situation again. So you have one foot in the door and one foot outside ready to take flight. I know what that feels like. And you’re waiting for a sign.
The trouble with this scenario is that the sign that often comes is the one you’re expecting without realizing it. So if somebody has treated you badly in the past and you’re very aware of that, then that’s what you’re likely to see. And it doesn’t even mean that person is like that. This situation might have been totally out of character. Instead, it may have been a behavior that you elicited because you are so close.
A relationship won’t work with a partial commitment. If you’re 60% committed to this relationship, how well do you think that will work? It’s the same for having a pre-Nup. If you’re not committed 100% don’t do it!
3. Sacrificing Your Independence
There is a lot of giving in a relationship. There’s also respect, love and communication. And when you’ve been on your own for a long time, it’s much easier to make decisions about where you want to go, who with and when? There are no awkward questions. No need to lie or hear lies and life is simple. It’s easy. But is that what you’re looking for, easy?
Because it’s also often the path of loneliness, of not having anybody special to share a sunset with or enjoy the sights of traveling the world. Not to mention you get invited out less as married friends don’t often like having single women along. Especially attractive ones! Not that you NEED to have somebody special in your life. You can be happy without a relationship.
Love is not a sacrifice, it’s a joy. A joy to give, a joy to learn and a valuable personal expansion to gain.
4. It’s Been a Long Time in Between
Of course, if it’s been years and you don’t know what to do anymore it can be a bit stressful. You may not have been on the dating scene for years but people don’t change that much. What you love, is what you want to share with somebody close. if they don’t like enjoying the things you like, that’s ok there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just not a match.
Take it easy. There are no expectations. Become friends. Do things that friends do together. Have fun, share doing the things you enjoy together and have inspiring conversations.
Not all of us grew up in loving households, but we do know by now how to have friends. And contrary to popular belief men isn’t that much different from women. They still like to share fun, love, and laughter. And we ALL want to feel loved.
5. Thinking that Love is the Culprit
Love is real and it will never cease as love is your natural state of being. Being ‘in love’ may not last but the love you feel for each other transforms. I’ve been in my second marriage for over 30 years now and I love my husband more now than when we met. That was a different type of love and it involved a lot of insecurity. But this mature love that has developed is secure but still fun. He is my best friend and confidant. And as I’ve grown, he has too. I know he feels the same way.
The secret is that we both decided a long time ago that each of us was responsible for our own happiness and in that way we released a lot of blame and expectations from each other and it allowed the relationship to flourish. This world couldn’t survive without love. It would shrivel and die, that’s how much influence love has on life.
Love is never to blame for fear.
If You’re Not Afraid of Love You Are Free!
None of us will ever stop being open to love because it’s our natural state of being. And it’s only logical that we would want somebody special to share it with. As a Course in Miracles states: Only love is real and nothing unreal exists.
So don’t be afraid to love again. Stand in your own space of self-love and know that you are a beautiful, giving, joyous being and will always receive what you give. There is no other path. Don’t look for somebody to fill or complete you as you are already whole and complete. Instead, look for somebody who matches what you give. Love, compassion, and laughter. In fact, you don’t even need to look. When you give only love compassion and laughter, that’s ALL you can receive. It’s Universal Law.
Have I missed some fears or apprehensions that are important to you? Let me know in the comments below.
Love is real and it will never cease as love is your natural state of being.
Gayle Maree – Spiritual Counselor
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Who am I?
I’m Gayle Maree, creator of Spiritual-Soulmate, author, mother of 7 and Spiritual Counselor (for over 23 years).
Someone once told me (a well-respected mentor) that people need “experts” to find love in their life… and I didn’t believe them.
I thought everybody could do it on their own. I mean, I did. I figured out what didn’t work in my first marriage and then I changed it. Actually, I changed me.
Not because I was trying to impress others or I had something to prove to people who thought I was lousy at relationships, but because there were aspects of me that I didn’t like. I wanted improvements.
And I knew that if I didn’t make changes I could expect more of the same types of relationships. So, I set about what would be a continuous, amazing journey.
My second marriage has been over 30 years now and we still work on it, but it’s not the relationship that needs the work, it’s us. It’s me.
Now it’s your turn
This is the same path I used to make the changes that led to a happy. loving relationship and you can use it to find success in love too.
Good luck!