Most people want to be loved but struggle to find love. Everybody has a different idea of what love is: some people think they have to find ‘the one’ and be in a monogamous bliss. Some people want to find one primary life partner to love and have sex with others. And other people want to love more than one person at a time. All of these different ways of finding love are good, they make up the huge diversity of what we want and desire as human beings.
In my consulting room, I hear many single people struggling to find love, over and over again, but what I also hear are blocks that people have to find love.
These are some of the blocks:
1- Low self-esteem. If we can’t love ourselves it is hard to open up to another. Why? Because there is a fear that others will see us as an unloveable person. We are our worst critics and we can think about ourselves with the harshest words: ‘I’m stupid’, ‘I’m not worthy of love’, ‘who would love me?’ ‘I’m a good for nothing’, ‘I’m too ugly’, ‘I’m too fat’, ‘I’m not smart enough’, and so on and so forth. If we believe those things about ourselves, we can’t open up to others because we are afraid they will also see what we think of ourselves.
2- Fear of rejection. Many of us harbor subconscious beliefs about ourselves or the world around us that can distort our perception of reality. For example, if you have a core belief that says: ‘I’m all alone in the world’ it will be hard for you to have an emotional sense that your partner is really genuine when they say: ‘I love you’. You won’t be able to hear these words, instead, you are hypervigilant to the signs of rejection: you can discount the words ‘I love you’ yet pay great attention to your partner being late for ten minutes, which you translate as: ‘he doesn’t love me’ because this fits with ‘I’m alone in the world’. Other people have core beliefs about relationships, which they have learnt from childhood experiences such as: ‘people don’t stick around’, ‘It hurts to be in a relationship’. Instead of engaging fully in a connection with someone else, we can approach others with a barrier to shield us from anticipatory rejection: this is a self-fulfilling prophecy as it makes it hard for somebody to truly connect with us if all we show of ourselves is our shield.
3- The perfection complex. This is becoming more and more of a problem as we live in an age where everybody looks at everybody else’s best life moments captured with beautifying filters. When we see our friends and peers on social media always being happy, beautiful and successful, we tend to compare their beautiful ‘shop window’ with our messy storage backroom: we then feel we are the only one who is imperfect and we feel deeply inadequate. We become afraid that we won’t be liked, that we won’t be good enough. So, again, to protect ourselves, we hide, and as we do so we can’t be seen for who we really are.
This Valentines Day, I challenge you all to make a stand against all those blocks. Be proud of your imperfections. Challenge your unhelpful thoughts: ‘you are a loveable person. You have a lot to offer to a relationship. You are good enough just as you are!’ You don’t need a six-pack or an iron-board flat stomach to be desirable. Take a risk to be vulnerable opening your arms and show who you truly are to another, invite them to open their arms too. Share one thing you’re insecure about, or one thing you worry about, one thing you are scared of, or one thing you dream about. And invite a friend to do the same with you.
Intimacy and love (whether it is with a partner or a friend) does not reside in conversations about how many vegan meals you ate or how many times you go to the gym. But in the dialogue: ‘this is me. Right here. With all my imperfections. And I want you, as you are. Together, sharing our true selves. I will show you my hopes and dreams and I will share with you my anxieties and fears. And I invite you to do the same.’
Put your phone down, look up and see that everybody is imperfect and everybody has similar anxieties, hopes and dreams as you have, because we are all humans. Be courageous and be kind to yourself and others, because it is through radical acceptance, connection and nurture that we can all flourish and it is within that space that we can find true love.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Silva Neves
