So, you have vowed to yourself never again! Never again with love that is. Who wants restless nights, crazy thoughts, and feeling as if you aren’t good enough for love because love hasn’t been kind to you? In fact, love has been brutal and a nightmare. At least, that is what you tell yourself, and you have the proof. Besides the broken heart you were left with, his side of the closet is empty. His toothbrush is gone; everything in the drawers belonging to him is gone.
You battled the grief of love and put on a happy face around family and friends to not draw attention to the fact that you, for the first time in a long time, are alone. You have cried more than you would like to say, and you told yourself that you are better off loving yourself. This is true as self-love does count, but it’s definitely not going to snuggle up with you in the middle of the night nor will it place sweet, warm kisses on your forehead.
Learning to live alone has its ups and downs and you’ve conquered them—as if you had a choice. The truth is you were placed in this position because your relationship could not advance; it simply stopped growing. Maybe you were just too involved in your work to notice the changes around you. You did not notice that those good times you were having were one-sided, Maybe you were blinded by his late-night working schedule, unable to see it was to escape a lonely relationship. Either way, you now find yourself a year later experiencing feelings for another human being and that frightens you because you vowed “never again when it comes love.”
Lately, you have been seeing yourself in a healthy, loving relationship and as much as you deserve love and are worthy of love, you find a way to think the worse. A mind full of what if’s is not going to manifest anything positive. Shake off the negative thinking and take a leap of faith in the direction of love sounds good on paper. But it doesn’t move the needle one bit towards taking those first steps, now does it? That is what you must overcome if you want a second chance at love.
Don’t be silly and pass up an opportunity to meet an awesome person or have someone meet that awesome person who is you. Like everything in life, add your broken heart to your life book (we all have one). Your life book has many sections, and depending on the choices you make some sections are fuller than others. File the experience away in that section of disappointments, regrets, hurt and fear. Give yourself a break, live a little and stop being hard on yourself. It takes two to tango; no one tangos alone. Here is the truth. Fearing love after a broken heart is more common than you think and not knowing whether you can love again is also common. However, the fact that people fall in love every day after broken relationships is also common.
There are more wrong ways of loving someone than there are right ways. Now that you’ve experience the wrong side of love, knowing what you want and how you want to be treated, as well as how to treat your partner or lover, should be easier for you. Sure, you will feel afraid in the beginning, but once you open your heart to love again, loving others will be easier. Right now, you don’t trust love and that’s understandable. But you must not allow negative past experiences to hold you back from those good experiences yet to come. If you’ve met someone new, stop pushing them away and punishing yourself for failed past relationships. Being in a relationship is always a risk because you never know, nor do you have control of, how things will turn out. You take one day at a time and work to improve yourself and not the other person.
No one’s perfect! We all have baggage from past relationships. If you have been married a few times or were in a few long-term relationships, having baggage is expected. Do not think you are the only one who may have trust issues when it comes to letting someone new into your life. You are not. Who hasn’t been in a place of doubt and uncertainty. Just saying we all may have visited that place a time or two? Overcoming The Fear to Love Again is in no way easy, but it’s not as scary as you are making it out to be. If you are a good judge of character and learned your relationship lessons in the past, you already have the do’s and don’ts of making, or breaking, a relationship through experience. Of course, who wants to think the worse? Sure, being in a relationship after you’ve been out of the dating world for a while can be challenging at first. However, no one is saying to go into a new relationship with your eyes closed. Here is where you need to know what you want and don’t want to deal with in a new relationship, as well as those things that could potentially be a deal breaker. Know what you are not going to put up with. Stand firm on what you want and don’t want early in the relationship because if you don’t things will only get worse.
Finally, here is where you also remind yourself that your position in the relationship is not to parent your partner or change who they are as a person. If that is the goal, you will be unhappy. Having a happy and healthy relationship starts with you; that is what you control, nothing else. This should also be the mindset of your partner. If you both learn and implement this lesson, together you would experience a win when it comes to love.
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