When Fear Stifles Love

A question for you: can you imagine what would happen if all your emotions were in disguise? What would happen if there were negative emotions that could hide in positive ones? Would we be able to handle it?   In this context, let’s also think about the worst possible scenario. When one of the worst emotions disguises itself as one of the best, what would happen if fear came in the form of love?

Love, and we mean romantic love here, is the sun under all our emotions. It arises between two people and in it there is attraction, devotion, intimacy and passion. It is a phenomenon that affects us down to the last cells of our body. Of course, love also affects our minds, emotions, and even preferences. How could fear hide in an emotion like love?  This idea of feeling love and fear together …

In the end, isn’t love an act of courage and generosity towards the other person and ourselves? Perhaps we should row back and first clarify what it means that fear disguises itself. We formulate the question differently: What would happen if the person who triggered the love also aroused fear in us?

When love and fear come together

Why fear?   Let’s be fair and admit that this emotion has been with us since the beginning of time. It has allowed us to escape and given us the will to fight to survive. So when we are faced with an emotional event as overwhelming as love, it is normal for fear to arise as well. It lets us know that change could be a bad thing.

And it is precisely because fear is activated so easily that it is no longer as useful as it used to be. Today we respond disproportionately to events that are not life threatening. We classify certain events as threats or dangers, which in truth can only do us good.

Fear loses its usefulness when it paralyzes us, prevents us from enjoying, from suffering, simply from life. These previous stories of abandonment, sudden breakups and pain and suffering leave a scar on our soul and condition our way of understanding and accepting love. We become compulsive and afraid of love. We constantly try to escape the suffering that relationships cause. Or even the suffering inflicted on us by society and our feeling of not being loved or wanted.

The disguise of fear

We have considered the first crucial points. But, when fear is activated by so much happiness, and love can trigger it through past romantic relationships, how does it manifest itself? Let’s look at a few examples.

• The search for love. This is the dearest disguise of fear, and it leads to loneliness. This fear arises because of the stereotype that “being alone is terrible” that has been planted in our minds. This fear takes on other dimensions. Because whether we are aware of it or not, it forces us to compulsively look for a partner. And we do this to escape the terrible fate of being alone. We take a great risk trying to control love, whoever receives it, its development and its end.

• Doubt. Let’s say love knocked and we opened the doors for it. Nevertheless, a shadow has decided to colonize our mind in its most dear way: “Is this my moment?”, “Am I too fast?”, “Is that what I really want?” In this case, fear does not hide from heartbreak. We know we’ve had tough times in the past. We assume that our emotional scars will be felt along the way.
• Exaggerated perfectionism. In those situations where we have an absolute need to please and be liked by our partner, to the point where we even adjust our personalities, fear also hides. It’s the fear of “not working”. We are afraid of being abandoned again . This is called fear of loss. It threatens to separate us from a vital person. And it will be successful if we allow it to infect our partner as well.

Should we accept them or fight against them?

Now we know why and how love and fear are related. The logical question now is: are we alone in the face of this danger?   Not at all. Even so, before we start thinking about the fear of love, we should become aware of our humanity. We need to understand that fear will always be a part of our lives and that we can accept it and choose to love or not.

Then we also find something that cannot be separated from life itself and the human condition: time. It may be difficult to play the “time card”. But it’s still one of the most important cards in the deck. Time and its healing abilities. It helps us see things from a different perspective. Time enables us to interpret events that have resulted from the interplay of love and fear.

In the end we exist as individual people, with our personal experiences and our wisdom. And most importantly, our infinite ability to love and our relentless desire to be loved, integrated, and valued. This love that we have felt, with everything that it includes, gives us the special ability to love again.

And what’s better than exposing ourselves to loneliness, doubt and loss and choosing love again?   Surely we will soften the fear with our love in the end.