Every human being is afraid of something, someone is even afraid of loving !
Sometimes what the human mind perceives as a threat is the unpredictable, the unknown, because what is unknown is seen as uncontrollable.
But sometimes to instill fear could be a scenario that apparently has nothing threatening, and in these cases the subject has great difficulty in explaining the reasons.
Thus, many subjects experience a philophobia , that is fear of loving , fear of falling in love or fear of establishing a relationship at the base of which there is a true falling in love.
We all tend to consider love as something positive, something that benefits the person and not something to be avoided.
Yet several researches show that many individuals declare that they are afraid of falling in love and afraid of really loving another person, even if in fact on the other side they seek closeness, affection and stability like everyone else.
In fact, there are many subjects who when they fall in love experience very intense emotions that they perceive as uncontrollable and dangerous , because they take over their usual way of doing and thinking.
We are all looking for love, but sometimes living a serious relationship is scary; sometimes against the desire to let go there are many mental resistances, which block and do not allow you to live a love story peacefully.
We therefore speak of philophobia or fear of falling in love while others speak of sentimental anorexia , when one cannot really love for the fear of suffering (or suffering again), overcontrolling one’s feelings and exasperating one’s need for independence and invulnerability.
The philophobic can get to show real symptoms of anxiety and a reckless and unreasonable fear, which pushes him to avoid all those situations, or people, that could lead him to a sentimental involvement.
In some cases, the fear of loving not only manifests itself with difficulty in approaching the other person, seen as a danger to one’s emotional stability, but can lead to experiencing real panic attacks .
Causes of philophobia
There are many facets of the same dynamic, which prevents you from being peacefully in a couple and building a future together with another person, as the fear of love leads to attitudes that make the partner feel unloved and unimportant.
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 kind of alert reaction that is activated when you understand that the story becomes more serious and you begin to feel emotionally dependent on the other.
These feelings at the beginning of a relationship (but only at the beginning) are normal and also within certain functional limits, because falling in love necessarily involves a loss of control and a reliance on the other.
However, when you are used to always controlling everything, by character or in defense of potential suffering, you are not willing to live in terms of the other and therefore you are so afraid of loving that you move away (and distance the other) when most there would be to get closer and let go.
Falling in love is considered a weakness , something that makes us vulnerable and dependent , and the other becomes a potential danger. Just the opposite happens to what should happen in love: instead of feeling secure close to your partner, you feel fragile.
When strong feelings are intended as a source of insecurity and danger, philophobia takes over and you never let yourself go.
When, on the other hand, past love has been a source of suffering, one fears of finding oneself in the same feeling, of being abandoned, hurt, betrayed or humiliated , and one tries to rationalize and control, as much as possible, one’s involvement. This with the illusion that it is precisely this closed attitude that makes us immune from future sufferings of love .
Also, sometimes we are afraid to commit because the fear of loving hides a fear of the loss of freedom. We often experience love as a bond or a limitation, which involves commitment and responsibility . Loving becomes an obligation, a constraint within a relationship, where adapting one’s life to the needs and expectations of the other is experienced as an effort rather than a pleasure and enrichment as it should be.
The effects of philophobia on partner and relationship
Sometimes the person suffering from philophobia , despite being aware of the groundlessness of their fear, cannot help but escape from relationships, fought, on the one hand, by the desire to let go of their feelings and those of their partner, and pushed, on the other hand, to escape, to quell the anxiety and the strong state of tension that end up taking over.
Even when he manages to stay in a relationship, he alternates moments of closeness to others of detachment , he is always on the defensive, one step backwards; often this also generates sexual difficulties , especially for women, whose pleasure comes through letting go, the loss of control, and therefore implies total trust in the partner.
It also happens that these people who are very afraid to love deliberately choose to undertake difficult and impossible love stories (married / engaged partners, at a great distance, even only “telematic”, etc.), being careful to catch every little signal that makes them understand when is the right time to distance themselves and take shelter.
Most of the time, however, this extreme attention to signs of abandonment threat, based on their fear and distrust of the other, leads them to invest limitedly in the relationship , to move away first and to diminish the importance of the partner , injuring him repeatedly and making him feel unloved, with the high risk that he really goes away for healthy self-protection.
How to deal with and overcome philophobia
Falling in love is undoubtedly an experience that brings into play profound aspects of our personality. Sharing your life with the person you “choose” to love, in fact, means showing the other intimate aspects of your self, making yourself weak and vulnerable .
The couple relationship represents a delicate play of forces, within which it is necessary, in order to find a functional balance, on the one hand to adapt and modify some behaviors or attitudes of one’s own to feel closer to the partner and give him love, and on the other being able to remain themselves, maintaining their spaces of intimacy and autonomy.
If love is synonymous with a couple, and this one of limits, renunciations and responsibilities, as well as threats to our emotional stability and our independence, it is normal to be afraid of loving . First of all, however, we must remember that the couple relationship is not an obligation, but a choice.
We are afraid of being disappointed by others but the problem with disappointment is our demands. We are afraid of loving because we are afraid of not receiving what we want .
If we continue to delude ourselves that our happiness depends on what others do, we will always have too many external demands, with a high possibility of being disappointed and suffering. In this way it is normal, inevitable, to be afraid of loving .
If we start from the idea that others have the ability to make us feel bad, it is inevitable to keep them away when their behavior is not as we would like.
The fear of loving prevents you from giving love, but also from receiving it in the long term . Paradoxically, loving is the only remedy for the fear of loving . It becomes a vicious circle, because the more we are afraid of loving, the less we love and the more we suffer, thinking, however, that the cause of everything is outside of us because others do not love us .
This is how demands arise, the desire that others be as we would like, because we think that if that were the case, we would be fine. The problem is that the fear of loving leads to expect love (to feel safe) without giving it and without giving oneself , with the result that the other, if he loves us, will over time stop doing it.
It is very important to become fully aware of one’s emotional experiences, to realize how afraid we are of abandoning ourselves to love, but demanding it.
Recognizing this fear is not easy, because it can hide behind a thousand “justifications” such as malaise, disinterest in serious relationships, practical and logistical difficulties, fatigue, difficult periods, etc.
In the event that the discomfort generated by the fear of love takes 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 expecting to receive.
Asking for help is the first step in starting to face the fear of love , since through psychotherapy one experiences a relationship at the base of which there is trust and the possibility of trusting; understanding the origin of wounds and learning to heal them can allow us to rediscover how positive it can be to live better, open up (or reopen) to emotional relationships, allowing ourselves the luxury of risking being happy.
