Fearful and Faking or Faithful and Loving?
Subconsciously, we become the things we fear.
I’m not a love coach or a love professional, but I believe that there’s a lot we still don’t know about love, no matter how much we’ve learned or seen others do. Most times, I find it rather easy to see those things when I’m outside the walls of a relationship than when I’m inside them.
In recent years, relationships have evolved into different shapes and sizes, but one thing that remains constant is that no one can stay in a relationship where they’re scared of getting hurt.
Put it however you want, fear breeds contempt, and contempt, insecurities. Well, insecurities as we know, give way to mistrust and disloyalty.
What starts as a simple “They might cheat on me” will result in your becoming a roadman because you’re already preparing yourself for the worst thing that will happen — they’re leaving you.
Sooner or later, you start to cheat yourself out of the relationship until slowly you become more toxic and eventually ruin a once good thing with the killer phrase we all hear;
“We weren’t just meant to be…”
The truth isn’t that you weren’t meant to be. The truth is that you weren’t ready to handle them.
And more so, you weren’t meant to be with anyone.
Why?
Because you haven’t healed.
Because you still carry that fear around.
And because you’re still very emotionally unstable.
You’ve wandered far too far from healing, not wanting to face them and now, all you do is feed the pain (who is already, happily eating away your light and joy) with more pain.
Love is strange. You feel you understand everything about it while you’re single but when you enter into a relationship with someone, you realize that you still have a truckload of lessons to learn. And what you’d learned was only a small part of love — loving yourself.
Yes, that’s the first step to love — To fall in love with yourself, accept yourself for who you are and what made, and making conscious efforts to make yourself happy.
Yeah, I know it’s easier said than done, but nobody ever said that it was impossible. Here are a few things I think you should try out when next you plan on entering a new relationship.
1. Heal before you deal.
I hear people say this a lot but I believe that pain, no matter how small makes you want to be less vulnerable and close up the emotional and caring part of you. Because pain doesn’t just hurt you. It makes you scared of it. And you will want to try everything possible to not go through that pain again.
It’s an instinct; a defence mechanism you may put it. Your brain tries to flee from pain and everything that might be a potential risk.
But if you’ve healed from your past, the impact that it will have on you will be far lesser than when the pain is still fresh. Yes, you might be more careful and still have some doubts, but these doubts will not be as a result of your insecurities, it will be as a result of what you now know is right and wrong.
Don’t wait for that person to fix you. Even if you need a break, take it and heal. That way you save yourself a lot of drama.
Pain opens your eyes to a variety of lessons. So, give yourself time to heal and grow.
2. Trust your partner.
Above all, have fervent and unfailing love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins [it overlooks unkindness and unselfishly seeks the best for others]. (1 Peter 4:8 AMP)
If forgiveness and healing from the past are achieved, trust becomes very easy. It is valid that true love that is pure and sincere covers a multitude of wrongs. But another vital point is that you can lever love what you don’t trust. Love comes from trust and without it, love is fake.
Then, if love is fake, there is no room for sincerity and there is also no room for expression. In your mind, you’ll be thinking, “Why should I even care? In the end, they’re still going to cheat on me or break me worst than they found you”. Well, thoughts like that will most certainly lead to the end of what could have been beautiful.
So, forgive your past, heal from your past, and trust your partner. Have a little faith! 😉
3. Be the type of love you want to receive.
Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.(Luke 6:31 AMP)
One thing that I have learned these past months, is that relationships are one form of garbage in — garbage out. What you put in is what you get back in return. Maybe even more.🤷🏾♂️
I know there are exceptions to this; where you put in the good and all you get out is bad and hurt. The kicker here is you’re sowing on the wrong ground. And this ground lacks water and the nutrients necessary in the right amount to tend to the plant and make it grow.
In love, one person or both bring the plant (feelings), and you both tend and care for it while it grows. Leaving the job of tending to only one side is quite stressful and exhausting. As they will wear out, get tired, and walk away eventually.
If you want something, give it out first.
You want that good morning kiss, well, you know what to do, give it first.
You want those mushy messages buzzing your phone in the middle of your day, send them first.
You want your partner to gift you something nice, gift them first.
You want them to cheat? Cheat first.
Whatever you want, give it out first and ask for it later. But watch out, sometimes, love doesn’t always give us gifts wrapped in the way we want them. Sometimes, they come in when better packages. 🙃
4. Love yourself and don’t depend on your partner for happiness.
Love’s true test would be the test of whether you love yourself or not. If you fail this test, it means that you’re incapable of loving yourself, and let’s go a little further, loving someone else.
Being in a relationship demands a distinct level of confidence, content, and self-approval. All of which have to be built by you, from when you were single and alone.
If these basic needs are not in place, you’re giving your partner a lot of work and they might most likely not be able to carry all of the weight on their shoulder. Because on days when they are half-full or completely drained of all their positive energy, the work of feeding you confidence, and self-worth will be a very hard job. And it is on these days, that when they are empty that they need you to help them replenish their energy. But how can you do that, when you are empty yourself and you are just relying on them for your happiness.
You cannot share happiness when you don’t have happiness to share.
Fights happen because one half is pouring their frustrations on the other half. When these fights happen, one half must take the heat, absorb it, and answer with love otherwise, fights can very easily turn into a clash if both halves are not ready to listen to each other.
So love yourself, create your happiness, and learn to be content on your own. Or your partner will never be enough for you. Self-awareness is key and so is knowing your worth else all you’ll see your partner do is try to bring you down, while on their end, all they are trying so hard to do, is prove to you that you’re worth more than you think.
Trust me, being in a relationship and loving the person you are in the relationship with is hard. It requires loads of consistency, effort and on days you get angry, you just have to put all of the hurt and anger, and respond to them with love.
No relationship is perfect. But what counts is the effort and work put into working for what you have and if it is worth it, you build slowly to what you want. It most times is a trial and error and learning your lessons from those errors.
So………….in summary;
1. Heal before you deal.
2. Trust your partner.
3. Be the type of love you want to receive
4. Love yourself first and don’t depend on your partner for your happiness. They need you too.
P.S. I know it’s been a while since I published my last article, but I will try to write more. Thanks for stopping by. ❤ 😉
