The Lengths We Go To Avoid Love

if you are lonely, or push people away, or use humor to hide uncomfortable feelings, or try to be strong all the time, or think everyone will reject you, or keep hurting those who love you, or are overcome with jealousy, or don’t feel truly seen, or don’t feel like enough, then stagnancy is its own agony.

Alain convinced me that searching for love from a place of fear was not a good beginning to any love story. It meant motivations were often selfish – to avoid loneliness; to outsource happiness – and would lead in the wrong direction. As the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote, ‘If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it.’

For some of us, the fear of intimacy overpowers the desire for it. It feels safer to be alone or in relationships where we are “unemotionally involved” than it does to be emotionally vulnerable, close, and loving. I understand that. In spite of the range of needs and wants that go unmet when we don’t love, it may feel safer to not love. We don’t ri

What is the most common reason that love goes wrong? SQ: A lack of self-reflection and self-understanding. A lot of people think all you need to do to find a romantic relationship is to find a partner and, actually, the first step isn’t that – it’s to understand what you need and want. I always guide people away from defining what they want in a pa