Therefore, when someone is loving and reacts positively toward us, we experience a conflict within ourselves. The negative feelings we developed toward ourselves in our early years, became a deeply embedded part of who we think we are. If we felt unseen or misunderstood as children, we may have a hard time believing that someone could really love and value us. We are reluctant to take another chance on being loved. After being hurt in our earliest relationships, we fear being hurt again. Overtime, we may prefer these fantasy over actual personal interactions and real positive acknowledgment or affection. We may even begin to rely on fantasy gratification rather actual interactions with other people unlike people, fantasies cannot hurt us. We learn not to rely on others as a coping mechanism. As kids, when we experience rejection and/or emotional pain, we often shut down. For this reason many people shy away from loving relationships.įear of intimacy begins to develop early in life. Falling in love not only brings excitement and fulfillment it also creates anxiety and fears of rejection and potential loss. The experience of real love often threatens our self-defenses and raises our anxiety as we become vulnerable and open ourselves up to another person. Most of us say that we want to find a loving partner, but many of us have deep-seated fears of intimacy that make it difficult to be in a close relationship. Love is not only hard to find, but strange as it may seem, it can be even more difficult to accept and tolerate. We can overcome our fears of intimacy and enjoy more loving and more intimate relationships. We can confront our negative self-image and grow our tolerance for a loving relationship.
It is possible to challenge our core resistance to love. In order to overcome our fear of intimacy, we must challenge our negative attitudes toward ourselves and not push our loved ones away.