When we’re scared of real love, we can panic if someone loves us

By David McElroy · June 28, 2020

There are few things scarier than letting your guard down enough to accept love from another person — especially if you secretly fear you don’t deserve to be loved.

We all want to be loved. Most of us say we want a healthy and happy relationship. So we plant seeds and eagerly watch for love to grow. When the buds of love start growing, our warm hearts believe we’ve found what we’ve been looking for. We feel joy and happiness.

So why do so many of us find ways to block love at that point? Why do we feel panic when it’s time to accept what’s being offered? Why do we find excuses to slam the door in the face of the one who says, “I really love you and I accept you as you are?”

I see this pattern in other people pretty easily. It’s easy for me to smugly point my finger at another’s mistakes — but it’s humbling and horrifying when I realize I’ve made the same arrogant mistake.

It’s been 12 years since I sat across from a woman at a restaurant in Winston-Salem, N.C., one Saturday afternoon and tried really hard to slam the door shut on love. My girlfriend and I sat there for a couple of hours talking. I don’t remember how I started the conversation, but I was basically letting her know what was wrong with her.

We had been dating for something like eight months. The beginning had been blissfully happy, but I soon found reasons to be unhappy. And here’s the thing. I had legitimate concerns about some serious issues with her. I wasn’t being unfair and I wasn’t imagining things. There were problems.

But in the light of what I’ve learned about myself since then, I understand what I was doing. It would have been very healthy to bring up my concerns so we could work them out, but I was using my concerns as a reason to run away.

I understand now that it terrified me to be so deeply loved and adored by this beautiful and brilliant woman. So I was unconsciously trying to run away from her — to avoid accepting her love for the rest of my life. I wasn’t comfortable being loved this strongly, because it wasn’t what I was accustomed to. Since I felt uncomfortable, I needed to run, so I turned to my perfectionism — and I turned that into criticism of her.

It was my best way to run from love — and tell myself it was her fault. I could say she was flawed, not me.

I’ve been thinking about that this week after I read a series of questions related to my Enneagram personalty type: “In your closest relationships, how do you block the flow of love? As a [Type 1], does your perfectionism turn to criticism? What needs to happen for you to let in and express more love today?”

As soon as I read the questions, I felt the sick recollection of this thing I had figured out about myself years ago. This is what I’ve used — multiple times — to block love that made me uncomfortable. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to deal effectively with real issues with a future partner, but without using my concerns to run away.

Other types of people are going to use different excuses for running away.

Another person is going to raise a mask and avoid vulnerability, for instance, knowing it will drive away someone who offers love. We all have our own ways of finding excuses. Another person is going to find fault with the partner — as I did — for completely different issues.

In all cases, though, the underlying unconscious thought process is that we can’t possibly accept the love that this person offers — for some reason, real or imagined — because that allows us to avoid the terrible fear of letting real love into our hearts and lives in an honest way.

By doing this, we never have to be honest with ourselves. We never have to be honest with the other person. We can let the other person believe that he or she is defective or not good enough. And we can walk away from that love without admitting to ourselves that we are throwing away something which we desperately need.

I think I’ve learned this lesson well enough not to repeat it, but I hope the day will come when I believe that I deserve to be loved — by the sort of amazing woman who I fall in love with — and I will no longer feel so uncomfortable that I’ll look for a reason to slam the door in her face.

I never again want to run from the love I need — and I never again want to leave someone standing in the cold who is offering her heart and life to me.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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