Why "Love" Hurts

"How did "love", life's greatest joy, our true nature become "unsafe"?" asked Ken Energy today on Twitter (@holymully). He asks the BEST questions! Honestly, the guy is a genius overflowing with compassion for humankind. Which is why his question resonates deeply into the pain of so many broken hearts.

I agree with Ken: Love is our true nature. We are Divine Love manifesting itself. We are Divine Joy incarnating. That is why we enjoy "being IN love" so much: it reminds us of the Love Source that we used to be IN and that we come from. It reconnects us to our spiritual perfection. While the love connection is strong,

• in a romantic relationship,
• in a spiritual experience or
• in a healing experience,

our emotions are at peace: bliss, heaven on earth.
It feels like: " I love you now, in this moment and this is all that ever was, or ever will be." By @Adam Fyre ,the most gentle, in love with his wife poet on Twitter!

So many of us have done the work on ourselves and have learned to love deeply and to give generously. Why then does it also happen that we can create so much pain in the process of loving each other?

If we experience pain, clearly the opposite of love is at work. The great destroyer of love is fear. Fear of what?

Fear of receiving.

We all enjoy loving because it is an ACTION. It's Yang. It puts us in control. It's something we DO.

But being loved, receiving love, is more of a state of being. It's Yin, RECEPTIVE.

Now here is the catch: ready?

Being yin and receptive is how we were as infants. So if we had a good relationship with our carers we learned to trust deeply and bond at that very early, vulnerable and innocent time of our lives. We registered and still have good body and emotional memories of being cared for, held, vulnerable. These memories feel good and we can let go into that vulnerability again and again. We can allow ourselves to just be without doing. We know how to feel safe when we receive love. We know how to be intimate, emotionally as well as physically.

If you had an average Western infancy and childhood, chances are that the adults caring for you and holding you were at best tense, anxious, conflicted, emotionally repressed and at worst traumatized or traumatizing. You learned that:
being taken of care = experiencing tension
being taken care of = expecting uncertainty
being taken care of = experiencing pain
being taken care of = feeling fear

Intimacy? I think not!

You learned that:
receiving = being at risk of receiving tension, pain or fear
receiving = uncertain outcome.

Receiving? I think not!

You are going to want to AVOID at all cost the situations that remind you in any way of the situation where your vulnerability felt like powerlessness. That is when you have trouble letting go into intimacy, when you start making demands out of fear, when you create unreasonable attachments that stifle and constrict.

When we associate early memories with scary powerlessness, we become incapable of RECEIVING love. Or Love. We are still happy and keen to love others. But we cannot receive their love. That is when relationships hurt and then fail: everyone wants to love, to give (read: stay in control) and no one is receiving. Under the cover of love what is really taking place if a struggle for control and safety.

Most of us know how to love. We need to learn HOW TO RECEIVE LOVE.

It is easy and very possible to erase old memories and rewire our brain, our body and our energy system so we are free of negative associations. Contact me or any healer you trust to discuss this if you feel it would help you.

Do YOU know how to receive love and Love? Do you know how to BE IN LOVE and BE LOVE?