Fear of Love

"Believe it or not, most of us are brought up in modern culture to fear love. This is a radical statement, so pause a bit and consider it.

How often were you, as a child, criticized and laughed at for expressing your honest feelings? How often are you now used, in our culture of merchandising, as an object to be manipulated in order to satisfy some other person’s desire for profit and power? How often do you shape yourself—with fad diets, implants, cosmetic surgery, workouts, jewelry, tattoos, makeup, hair dye, and clothing—to meet the expectations of someone’s desire?

So what does a person learn from childhood experiences other than that this is a world of competition, strife, and conflict, geared toward the survival of the “fittest”—or in today’s world, the meanest—in which honesty and compassion are foolish weakness?

And how often, in the midst of all this exploitation, has anyone ever done anything for your own growth and welfare, without thought of what could be had in return?

To offer true love—to will the good of another [9]—is to be satisfied with one’s own weakness, humility, and insignificance. Love is an act of will, not something that you “fall” into. You can fall into desperate desire, and you can fall into fatal attraction, but you can’t fall into love. Love is a sacrifice of sorts, and it’s a sacrifice of all that the culture deems valuable. So to offer this real love, or true love, is to stand against the culture—not as a revolutionary or terrorist, but with a humble offering of something better than what others “see” in their blindness.



Often people fear that someone or something they love will be taken from them by someone else. But in true love there is no jealousy. When you have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain, how can you fear a “rival”?

But, because romance is not based in true love, romance is, in technical psychological terms, a game—and to play this game, you must put yourself in competition with everyone else playing the same game. This explains the essence of jealousy: in your fear of losing what you desperately want, you hate any person who might come between you and what you want.


True love, therefore, forsakes the prestige offered by the culture in its illusions. And, when we have been taught from childhood to covet this prestige as our very identity, is it any wonder that we fear love?

Far easier—and safer—isn’t it, to hide behind illusions and games of wealth, power, intrigue, and seduction?"


from: http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sex_love.htm


Posting this on my blog doesn't imply that I agree with all that is said here. It is just that I found it interesting to read. If you want to know my opinion, I think this fear is hell a lot more complicated than this!. All I was trying to do was to make you question yourself if you recognize this fear.

When I finished reading it for the first time I started laughing out loud!!

As soon as I find the time and feel comfortable enough with expressing my ideas I will write a short essay on "Romantic Love".