by Terry Marsh

Created on: December 06, 2008

Love is the most emotionally satisfying feeling that we experience. But losing love, or a loved one, can create an emotional debilitation from which many find it difficult to recover. Overcoming emotional disappointment may be easier for some than it is for others, but doing so is essential to our long term emotional well being.

The primary reason why people are afraid to love is because two equally strong emotions paralyze us from moving forward beyond past experiences. Those emotions are pain and fear. The two are so closely related that rarely do we experience the discomfort of pain without developing an aversion to it. And, that emotional safety net designed to protect us from repeating unpleasant experiences is fear.

Our first exposure to love is the nurturing that most of us receive as newborns. At that point, we establish both a physical and emotional bond which feeds us with the life sustaining nutrients that encourages physical development, and the emotional stroking which makes us feel safe and secure.

As we mature and are exposed to outside social influences, we are weaned away from the bond of parental nurturing, and develop relationships on a much broader scale. But our natural instinct to both love and be loved is carried with us outside of the home and into our new experiences and social interactions.

Up to this point, the process of emotional growth has been as nature intended, slow and deliberate. There have been no abrupt changes in the level of our emotional experiences. But, then we experience a change in how we feel about the opposite sex. There is an attraction much different than anything we've felt for family members or friends, but just as during the nurturing period of a newborn, the attraction is both physical and emotional.

As we explore an entirely new type of relationship, we also begin to realize that the manner in which we love is completely different than anything previously experienced. And because all of our previous exposures to love have been positive and fulfilling, we throw ourselves into it with reckless abandon.

Suddenly, after a period of time, things change. Something devastating happens which negatively affects that relationship, and there is a feeling of emotional despair never before experienced. There is hurt, pain, disorientation, and an inability to honestly express all that is being experienced. Simple tasks become arduous, and there is a diminished desire to participate in the activities that until recently gave you joy.

Eventually, in an effort to move forward in life, emotional barriers are created to establish a shield against ever feeling that way again. Any approaching signs that the level of love which tore so deeply into the emotional core become quickly extinguished. The truth is that people are not so much afraid of love, but of the emotional pain which can hurt so traumatically that it seems to never go away completely.

And in some cases, it never does.

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