Defensive About Love?

If the idea of unconditional love causes you to feel anxious there’s a good chance there is some emotional healing that is needed before you can fully embrace the idea. We are all a collection of emotional wounds from our past which prevent us from fully enjoying all the best things this life has to offer.

In an effort to find ways to survive the maze of all that life can throw at you, you create a defensive system just to navigate the potential angst you can face on a daily basis. You don’t want to feel bad, rejected, threatened, or experience emotional pain, so you make it a priority to protect yourself from being vulnerable.

Yet, love is all about letting go and being vulnerable.

While we all want to be loved unconditionally, the idea of loving someone else this way can be very frightening, leaving you fearful of what might happen if you let down your guard. Your protection of yourself can be interpreted by onlookers, or potential love interests, as hostility or anger.

You may find yourself pushing away a potential love interest, finding fault, potentially offering up false accusations, impulsively challenging, judging, or rejecting any openness, compassion, or closeness because you are overwhelmed by the pain from your past relationships (which can go far back, even to early childhood relationships).

You may be unaware of the source of your angst, still, you remain defensive, embroiled in defensive thought, overwhelmed by fault-finding, seeing “red flags,” or finding ways to blame anyone or anything for justifying your negative feelings.

Just the fact that you were emotionally hurt or betrayed by someone you fully loved and trusted from your past can create an alarm that sounds triggering your defensive response any time you feel yourself starting to trust or love.

When you were a child, you loved unconditionally, often only to be abrasively and suddenly make keenly aware that you cannot trust those who you believed would never hurt you. You carry these unhealed emotional wounds into adulthood, as you collect more corroborative evidence along the way.

As a child, you idealize or idolize your parents, and when they discipline you, you feel rejected, still, to survive, you assume responsibility and accept that you must have done something wrong or were bad, even when you did nothing wrong. You might carry this into an adult romantic relationship, as you seek to replace your parents with a different kind of life mate.

We all desire to grow and expand in a safe environment with another to forge a life and emerging with a family of our own as we mature. When ancient texts suggest, like St. Paul did, “that a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh,” (Ephesians 5:31) note that it says to “cleave” not to cling. To cleave is like the grafting of two trees into one, so that the one tree can bear two types of fruit. There is no separation, yet the fruits of both trees are there for all to see and be enjoyed by the community.

This is the natural desire of an adult, yet your conscious and/or unconscious mind reasons that no one can be trusted, and if you do trust anyone, they will turn on you, causing you to experience sadness, pain, and/or emotional trauma.

If you’ve ever fully trusted and loved someone, only to have your whole world shattered into a million pieces, like the man who didn’t believe in love, what right-thinking person would willingly put themselves in that place of vulnerability again?

You can go on through life, asserting your independence by not needing anyone, “I can do it myself.” Doing so keeps others at arm’s length (and a beer bottle) and isolates you keeping from deeply connecting another or others. “I don’t need anyone.”

You may find ways to fill the void by immersing yourself in your career, hobbies, or addictions if you are unable to love yourself unconditionally. You might be surprised to learn that the same conditions you impose on others regarding trust and love, you also place upon yourself.

If you really desire to love another, you must first find the love for you within yourself. Then, this love can overflow to be shared with others.

See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.

You can’t expect someone else’s love to make you feel loved

You can’t expect someone else’s love to make you feel loved. When I see a friend, or love and romance client place so much emphasis on feeling loved from someone else, I can’t help but see trouble ahead.

You know how it goes. These are the kind of souls so dependent on receiving validating love from another person that they feel desperately alone, with declining self-worth, when they’re not feeling deeply connected to someone else.

When they’re in love with someone, their whole life centers around the object of their affection, which is glorious and feels so real, while things are good. When things are bad, they are the worst, and when the relationship ends, it is devastatingly tragic.

I’m no stranger to this type of love which is both selfless and selfish at the same time. I loved like that. I didn’t know there was any other way to feel loved, except to feel it from someone else.

It wasn’t until I learned to find the source of my love within that I came to know that true love originates within my heart and spills over to those around me. It’s a completely different approach to love.

Now, when I see people struggling with seeking love from outside themselves I can empathize with them and support them in the best way that I can while they continue to ride the love rollercoaster of their own making.

Not everyone is open to the idea of finding the unlimited source of love which when it is discovered, you realize that it has been there all the time, though this has been hidden from you all your life. So, it’s somewhat of a shock when you discover it.

It shakes up everything you know. Most people are just not able to conceive of such a concept, so they remain in their self abusive cycle of seeking love from someone or something outside themselves.

To say, you can’t expect someone else’s love to make you feel loved, is not completely valid because being loved by someone else does make you feel incredibly good. Not unlike the high from using cocaine. It’s no surprise how addicting it can be.

It’s choice, one you must honor. Be there to rejoice with them when they are in the throes of love. Support them, letting your love spill out over them when they need it, when it all falls apart.

You can’t expect someone to understand a concept which is completely foreign to them. To try to explain the idea of loving yourself and having unconditional love for others, you might as well be speaking a different language. They are unable to hear you.

This concept is so wildly opposed to anything they understand about love, it is just not within their reach. And I understand because I was there, too.

It takes a great deal of personal, deep inner work, to get there, but it is so worth it.

For those who are open to the idea, whose hearts are fertile ground for loving at the next level, Awakening to True Love is there for you to explore the possibilities.

Exponential love, personal growth, and expansion awaits those who dare to love completely in an entirely new way.

See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.