Four Reasons You Might be Running Away from a Love that Could Change your Life and How to Stop
Love makes the world go round but for some of us it just drives us downright mad. We look at the people who hop in and out of healthy relationships and wonder how love and relationships are so easy for them but so goddamn difficult for us. If love makes the world go round then I wonder what loneliness brings.
Is love that hard to come by or is love hard to let in?
Love is like us, unique and beautiful, but often complex. It’s filled with layers. Many that remind us of feelings of joy and bliss and others that remind us of our most painful times. But love is like an ocean, stormy and peaceful, magnificent and never-ending. And just like the ocean it is up to us to decide when we’d like to wade around in the shallow end or blindly take that big dive.
So what is it about love that we find so hard to let in?
Love
The very word causes some of us to close down and run away. If you’ve ever felt a broken heart you know how easy it is to step away from anything that asks you to feel love again. Why would you ever want to experience anything that would resemble the same pain?
But love is beautiful, and if we’re open to letting it in it can happen more than once. It’s only when we’re open enough to show others all of our pieces, the broken and the whole, that we will be open enough to receive love again. So don’t look down at those broken pieces in shame let light shine through them and watch as they slowly put themselves back together in a different way. Love is waiting but we can only see it when we’re open to it being there.
Infatuation
Infatuation can be so strong, that people often mistake it for love, but love is all encompassing. When we love, we love BIG. We abandon all wit and become obsessed with creating a joyful life for those we love. We love without judgment or a desire to change. We love with our whole heart and endlessly give even when there’s very little left to give.
However some of us have confused infatuation with love. We find ourselves attracted to another person and our mind becomes fixated on ONE or TWO amazing pieces about them. Albeit their laugh, their smile, or their attractive physique but past those few qualities we can see flaws and those flaws turn us off.
But somehow, we’re still intoxicated by these qualities and we’re blinded by the truth. This isn’t love. It’s infatuation.
Perfect
We seek perfection but we forget that perfect doesn’t exist. We look at possible love interests and ask ourselves do they have all of the qualities we seek. Do they have the perfect job, height, family, body type and so on. The list is endless, as are our expectations.
But we always forget that if we fell madly in love with someone who met all of our impossible expectations that underneath it all, they’d still be flawed. Because the truth is we’re all flawed.
So if you have a list, throw it away and begin again. Focus more on how you want to feel in a relationship and less on whom you expect to see standing next to you. It’s easier to find the love you need when you know what you’re looking for. In the end looks will fade, but what’s in the heart will always be there.
The heart always knows so allow the heart to guide you on your journey.
Loss of our Own Identity
Ever felt controlled in a relationship? Perhaps trapped? These feelings cripple us. We forget who we were before the relationship began. We become incapable of making our own decisions, planning our own lives or even being alone.
The very relationships that were meant to make us happy leave us suffocating for air and lonelier than we’ve ever been. If you’ve ever felt controlled by a lover you know how fast those walls come back when someone tries to love you again. The walls are your protection and the people who try to love us are the enemy. But the truth is not everyone is our enemy.
Love can be healthy. We can be loved without losing our identity but we’ll never know if we don’t let down our walls.