Overcome the fear of love

It would seem that you want to fall in love for real – but who’s stopping you? There are many reasons, of course. A woman can experience fear of men, and vice versa – and often the roots of this fear are hidden in childhood and adolescence. It happens that the first love, which, with its strength and sharpness, raised the bar of our expectations to an incredible height, makes us compare all the chosen ones with the first one and fear that the new partner will not bring us to the level of feelings that we experienced in our youth.

Finally, we may be afraid of simply losing ourselves, having dissolved in a partner, and we keep our “I”, not allowing ourselves to open up and trust another. Love can overcome any fears, except the fear of love itself – it can only be overcome by understanding.

In Search of the Lost Happiness of First Love

First love for many remains the eternal standard of this feeling. We remember her with a smile (how wonderful it was!), or with a sigh (youth flew by …), or with pride (because everyone envied us then). First love becomes a tuning fork for relationships for life, and any, even the most dry piano, keeps the sound of this tuning fork in its memory.

Sometimes the most beautiful mature feeling loses in comparison with the first love: then everything was brighter, emotions were at the limit, Shakespearean passions blazed. How can the judicious “we are suitable for each other” compete with the uncompromising “all or nothing!” characteristic of youth!

“We were in the eighth grade, and Andrei called me “the sun,” recalls 26-year-old Katya. – There is nothing unusual in this word, it is banal, and then many called me that – but no one pronounced this “sun” like Andrei. And it was not so good either with anyone else. ”

The First Love Factor is an LP. The fact is that young people in love think that they are – just like Siamese twins – an introjection of their “I” into the “I” of another. We emotionally identify ourselves with our partner, and then, when the first connection breaks up, we begin to look for the same beautiful illusion of fusion in the new relationship.

We look at life with cautious optimism: we look at each other with a searching look, making new connections, trying them, like a coin, on the tooth. And it may seem fake because of the certainty that the first, naive coin, which we jokingly tossed in the palm of our hand, was real, until it got lost somewhere.

We hardly admit even the slightest imperfection in love. Faced with the demands of any relationship and the need to compromise, we feel discouraged. So too high a bar blocks the path of true love.

Unconscious fear of the opposite sex

Often this fear, expressed to one degree or another, does not allow accepting a partner: women and men fear that the other or the other will harm them, and therefore destroy relationships or abandon them.

“Many people are not aware of this fear at all,” says psychoanalyst Marina Harutyunyan. “But it exists, and many problems can be associated with it, including sexual ones: for example, frigidity in women or erectile dysfunction in men.”

From the point of view of Sigmund Freud, fear of the opposite sex is associated with an unconscious fantasy of incest. A little girl aspires to be her father’s wife, but has a vague concern that she is not the right one for him. And the boy wants to become his mother’s husband, but he is worried that he is too small for his mother, and she is too big for him, and is afraid of his father’s punishment.

Mom is the first woman in a boy’s life, father is the first rival. If the relationship in this first “love triangle” is overloaded with rejection, humiliation, anxiety, this can lead to a fear of intimacy with a woman later on.

Freud called this phenomenon the “castration complex,” says Marina Harutyunyan. – When a young man or a man feels that he is being suppressed, humiliated, neglected, he has an unconscious fear that they want to castrate him. Women’s neglect is especially dangerous here.

But the mother is the main person in the life of the girl. And if, for example, the father is aggressive, despotic and suppresses the mother, the girl, seeing this psychological or physical abuse, begins to fear her father. She subsequently transfers this fear to other men. However, you should not attribute all the problems of adult partners to children’s fears. For example, what we may qualify as fear and indecision in love can actually be a manifestation of a thirst for revenge.

The idea of ​​revenge, as a rule, is not addressed to a specific partner, but to some figures of the past. He who was once rejected now rejects himself and finds satisfaction in this.

“Somehow my husband and I had an argument in the presence of a friend,” recalls 39-year-old Irina. – He slammed the door, and she, with eyes round with horror, began to reprimand me: “What a terrible tone you are talking to him! Do you at least hear what and how you say to him?!” And I hear and understand, but I can’t help myself.”

“A woman may want to hurt her partner, offend him, and sometimes she really does not understand what is happening to her,” says transactional analyst Vadim Petrovsky. – And her desires may be based on childhood experiences: for example, dad did not let her go for a walk as a punishment. Now, as an adult, she rejects a man who seeks intimacy. It looks like an unconscious retribution for childish oppression: “And now you won’t be able to walk, dad!”

Vote of confidence

We doubt our partner: the suspicion that he (she) is capable of offending, betraying, taking advantage of our weakness and gullibility in their own interests can kill any feeling. As a rule, such doubts arise in those who have experienced these strong feelings before. For example, in childhood, when a close friend suddenly preferred another company or the father left the family…

“The break in ties that seemed strong to the child is perceived by the children as a betrayal and they conclude: they betrayed me, which means that no one can be trusted,” explains Vadim Petrovsky. “This is an internal decision that a child makes unconsciously, often reinforced by parents who themselves are not inclined to trust the world – and sometimes they just teach this to the child.”

Misha was eight years old, and dad promised him a surprise. He blindfolded the boy and suggested walking backwards, adding, “Don’t be afraid, if you stumble, I’ll catch you.” Misha really stumbled and fell on the pillows that his father had previously planted. When the frightened boy, who expected to be caught by his father’s hands, removed the bandage, his father said: “This is such a gift. And remember, you can never trust anyone.”

“All men are the same, never trust them,” girls often hear this phrase from a disappointed mother and remember it for the rest of their lives.

“It is very difficult to overcome such self-made“ karma ”, Vadim Petrovsky says. – A grown-up girl is sure: her partner will betray her in the same way as her father betrayed her mother, and behaves in a certain way, as if setting her man up to humiliate her. When the expected happens, she says to herself: “I knew that everything would happen exactly like this,” and her picture of the world, formed in childhood, remains unchanged. This is the existential meaning of the game that a woman sometimes plays.

Find love but don’t lose freedom

It’s a paradox: while desiring love and intimacy so much, striving for it so much, we simultaneously want to remain free. On the one hand, we are afraid of losing ourselves, becoming part of a partner, on the other hand, we are afraid that a loved one will take our time and effort, and the family will not allow us to pursue a career.

“Happy is the one who has experienced love and understands that this feeling gives a feeling of the fullness of being,” says psychotherapist Marina Khazanova. “But for a modern person this is not enough, he also wants to realize himself in a profession or creativity.”

“I turned my two-room apartment into a music studio,” says 35-year-old Konstantin. – All my girls liked space and freedom. And Katya talks about the child and makes plans: how to fence off the nursery … I love children, but then the apartment will become unusual, and music will have to be studied elsewhere. Probably, Katya and I will have to part.

Accustomed to putting professional interests first, we try to “build” our relationships in the same way as our own career: we consider the risk, we are afraid of deceit, we calculate whether the resources spent will pay off. And we become incredibly demanding of our partner: he must constantly confirm that we were not mistaken, knowingly sacrificed our own freedom, comfort and time.

“A busy man or woman may be perplexed: how is it that a stranger will start up in my house? – says Marina Harutyunyan. “Even in their imagination, they hardly imagine that a stranger can become a relative.” A pragmatic approach to relationships speaks to the fear of losing one’s freedom – and this fear prevents you from truly getting close to another.

Dialectics of love

“Too close”, “too far” – in the space of love it is difficult to correctly assess distances, and the fear of being dissolved in another is akin to the fear of losing him. “In love, there is a very complex dialectic of closeness and distance, identity and alienation,” explains Marina Harutyunyan. – First of all, you need to understand that the other person is different, but I still love him. He is not my second “I”, not I – his “I”, we are not one “I” for two. And yet he is dear to me, close, as I am to him. It is a complex dialectic: to leave alone, to be alone and to be together.”

There is a dialectic of proximity-range in many pairs. In fact, they are viable. In relationships in general, this intuitive eye is very important. Maybe it just needs a sense of tact, maybe something more…

“If a husband and wife are very closely connected, their relationship turns from intimacy into super-intimacy,” adds Vadim Petrovsky. “And it has a downside: the aggression that one of the partners shows in quarrels is simultaneously directed at the other and at himself.”

And yet, nothing hinders love so much as this despotic self, which prevents some of us from opening up to the other. The romance with oneself is exciting, but becomes tiring if it drags on too long. “A confident sense of one’s own “I” allows one to respect it and at the same time go beyond it,” says Marina Harutyunyan. “And without it, it’s hard to get rid of the fear of intimacy with another person.”