Falling in Love and the Fear of Loving

Anyone who has fallen intensely and deeply in love with someone, for long periods of time, knows how precarious it is to live in this state. It means being vulnerable, exposed, overly sensitive. The person becomes the center of our life, the light of our days, our greatest joy.  And so, this person holds an immense power over us. The fear of losing him/her becomes great. If this love is reciprocated, at least in part, we live to dance happily in seeing this love grow and blossom. We reveal ourselves and the other lets us in too. We eagerly desire this and our chosen one also wants us close to them. They need to feel the reassurance of our love.

For many people, to fall in love is an impossibility. Although they never say it that way, because it doesn’t sound right for someone to say that they never fall in love. ‘I am in love’ ‘I love you’ are the ‘necessary’ sayings in relationships between men and women. Not always sincere but ‘necessary’. But for many – men and women – the level of commitment, the vulnerability of falling in love would be too devastating, heartbreaking. They do not want to take the risk of being so exposed to someone, so dependant. Yes, being in love means depending, needing the other, to risk feeling empty and without direction if we lose our beloved, especially if the relationship was corresponded over a long period of time.

While fleeing from the possibility of experiencing this pain there are some people who always look for people to fall in love with them first. They want to be loved, desired, and admired. They want to be the center of someone’s life. They want to feel the security of having someone beside them, someone to whom they become indispensable and essential. They seek to win someone over, to correspond the love of another, but they never truly give themselves over. Who delivers themselves loses control, leaves the commands, and runs the risk of being abandoned.

Our love life doesn’t always endure long periods of solitude, closing ourselves to new possibilities. Sometimes we can get involved with someone who is passionate about us, but even while left feeling a deep and true love for this person, true romance does not occur and we’re not actually in love. Not because of a fear of loving, fear of loss, or the inability to give one’s self.

We may already have in our life story deeply loving relationships which ended for one reason or another. We know we have the capacity to give ourselves and for being vulnerable.  But now, with this person, we know that the love is less profound. True, honest, and rewarding it is, but for us, the person doesn’t have sufficient attraction, we don’t admire her enough for everything to melt inside of us and fall in love.

It is possible to live happily with someone for long periods of time, even if we do not love and desire them with the same intensity with which we are loved. But there is a danger for us whose love and desire is greater. There is the risk of losing, because if we already have known the immense happiness of mutually being in love, the reciprocal giving, this experience shines on us like a sun and attracts us as a moth to the flame, and if one day we have had and lost this, deep within us there the desire to re-live this incomparable intensity.

There are some people who have lived a great love and afterwards have broke up, killing inside of them the capacity to give themselves again. They close up. They become kind of bitter or at least somewhat hardened. They can be romantically involved again, marry, but never really surrender, and tend to stay emotionally reserved.

To sustain the dangers of this life requires a lot of self esteem, self confidence, ability, intelligence, and flexibility. To live with emotional health and maintain it throughout life, without closing up, without avoiding taking risks, exposing yourself, being vulnerable, and being transparent is truly a huge challenge.

As strange as it may seem, the greater our capacity to endure suffering, to not be traumatized by pain, aggression, frustrations and losses, the greater is our capacity to enjoy life, to surrender to it,  without fleeing from the dangers and risks because within and through them can exist immense joys.

The most intense joys, the greatest achievements are open to those who did not flee for fear of suffering, who can be exposed to all dangers and hardships with confidence that within these sufferings, or after them is the beauty of life, to love and be loved, to discover that the transcendent is always possible.