What is philophobia
Every human being is afraid of something, someone also has fear of loving!
Sometimes what the human mind perceives how a threat is the unpredictable, the unknown, because what is unknown is seen as uncontrollable.
But sometimes it could be a scenario that apparently does not have anything threatening, and in these cases the subject has a great difficulty in explaining the motivations.
Thus, many subjects experience one philophobiathat is to say fear of loving, fear of falling in love or fear of establishing a relationship to whose base there is a true falling in love.
We all usually consider love as something positive, something that gives a benefit to the person and not something to avoid.
Yet several research shows that many individuals declare they have fear of falling in love And fear of loving Really another person, even if in fact on the other side they seek closeness, affection and stability like everyone.
In fact, there are many subjects who when they fall in love to experience very intense emotions who perceive how uncontrollable and dangerousbecause they take over their usual way of doing and thinking.
We are all looking for a love, but sometimes living a serious relationship scares; Sometimes against the desire to let go there are many mental resistances, which block and do not allow you to live a love story serenely.
There is therefore talk of philophobia or fear of falling in love while others talk about sentimental anorexiawhen it is not really able to love for fear of suffering (or suffering again), hypercontroll by their feelings and exasperating their own need for independence and invulnerability.
The threaded It can manifest real symptoms of anxiety and a reckless and unreasonable fear, which pushes him to avoid all those situations, or people, who could lead him to a sentimental involvement.
In some cases, the fear of loving It is not only manifested with difficulty in approaching the other person, seen as a danger to one’s emotional stability, but can lead to experimenting with real panic attacks.
Causes of Philophobia
There are many facets of the same dynamic, which prevents you from being serenely in pairs and building a future together with another person, as the fear of loving It leads to attitudes that make the partner feel unwanted and not very important.
There may be a fear of losing control of the situation, typical of very rational people or those who have suffered for love. It is a sort of alert reaction that is activated when it is clear that the story becomes more serious and begins to feel it is Employees emotionally on the other.
These sensations at the beginning of a relationship (but only at the beginning) are normal and also within certain functional limits, because falling in love requires one control loss And one relying on the other.
However, when you are used to always checking everything, by character or by defense from potential suffering, you are not willing to live according to the other and therefore you have so much fear of loving To be moved away (and remove the other) when we would get closer and let go.
Falling in love is considered one weaknesssomething that makes us vulnerable and employeesand the other becomes a potential danger. The opposite of what should happen in love happens: instead of feeling safely close to the partner, you feel fragile.
When strong feelings are understood as a source of insecurity and danger, the philophobia Take the upper hand and you don’t let yourself go anymore.
When, on the other hand, the past love was a source of suffering, it is afraid of finding oneself in the same feeling, of being abandoned, injured, betrayed or humiliatedand we try to rationalize and control, as far as possible, our involvement. This with the illusion that this is precisely this closing attitude that makes us immune from future suffering of love.
Also, sometimes you are afraid to commit yourself because the fear of loving hides a fear of loss of freedom. We often live love as a constraint or a limit, which involves commitment and responsibility. Loving becomes an obligation, a constraint within one relationship, where to adapt one’s life to the needs and expectations of the other has lived as an effort rather than a pleasure and an enrichment as it should be.
The effects of philophobia on the partner and on the relationship
The person who suffers from philophobiasometimes, despite being aware of the foolishness of one’s fear, he cannot help to escape from the relationships, fought, on the one hand, by the desire to let himself go to his feelings and to those of the partner, and pushed, on the other, to escape, to quell anxiety and the strong state of tension that end up taking over.
Even when he manages to stay in a relationship, alternate moments of closeness to others of detachmentis always on the defensive, a step back; often this also generates sexual difficultiesespecially for women, whose pleasure passes through letting go, the loss of control, and therefore implies total trust in the partner.
It also happens that these people who have a lot fear of loving They deliberately choose to undertake difficult and impossible love stories (married/boyfriend partners, at a great distance, even only “telematic”, etc.), being careful to grasp every little signal that makes them understand when it is the right time to distance themselves and take shelter.
Most of the time, however, this extreme attention to the signals of abandonment threat, on the basis of their fear and distrust towards the other, brings them to invest limited to the relationshipto move away first and diminish the importance of the partnerhurting him repeatedly and making him feel little loved, with the high risk that this really moves away for healthy self-protrusion.
How to deal with and overcome pro -phobia
In love is undoubtedly an experience that puts deep aspects of our personality into play. Sharing one’s life with the person who “chooses” to love, in fact, means showing the other intimate aspects of one’s self, making himself weak and vulnerable.
The couple’s relationship represents a delicate game of forces, within which it is necessary, to find a functional balance, on the one hand adapt and modify some of their own behaviors or attitudes to feel closer to the partner and give him love, and on the other hand being able to remain themselves, maintaining their spaces of intimacy and autonomy.
If love is synonymous with a couple, and this of limits, renunciations and responsibilities, as well as threats to our emotional stability and our independence, it is normal to have fear of loving. First, however, it must be remembered that the couple’s relationship is not an obligation, but a choice.
We are afraid of being disappointed by others but the problem of disappointment are our pretensions. You are afraid of loving because you fear you don’t receive what we want.
If we continue to deceive that our happiness depends on what others do, we will always have too many pretensions towards the outside, with a high chance of being disappointed and suffering. In this way it is normal, inevitable, having fear of loving.
If we start from the idea that in others the ability to make us feel bad, it is inevitable to keep them away when their behaviors are not as we would like.
The fear of loving prevents you from giving love, but also to receive him in the long term. Paradoxically It is to love the only remedy for the fear of loving. Becomes a vicious circle, because The more you are afraid of loving, the less you love and the more you suffer, however, thinking that the cause of everything is outside us because the others do not like us.
Thus the pretensions are born, the desire that others are as we would like, because we think that if it were like this, we would feel good. The problem is that The fear of loving leads to pretending love (to feel safe) without giving and without giving oneselfwith the result that the other, if he loved us, over time will stop doing it.
It is very important to become fully aware of one’s emotional experiences, to realize how afraid we have to abandon themselves to love, but pretending to be.
Recognizing this fear is not easy, because it can mask themselves behind a thousand “justifications” such as malaise, disinterest in serious relationships, practical and logistical difficulties, tiredness, difficult periods, etc.
In the event that the discomfort generated by fear of loving Taking over it is advisable to seek the support of a psychotherapist, in order to find, within an adequate listening context, a useful space to overcome relational fears and learn to let go, to give for the pleasure of giving and loving without pretending to receive.
Asking for help is the first step to start face the fear of lovingsince through psychotherapy a relationship is experienced at whose basis there is trust and the possibility of relying on; Understanding the origin of the wounds and learning to restore them can allow us to rediscover how positive it can be to live better, open up (or reopen) to emotional relationships, allowing yourself the luxury of risking being happy.
