Love is kinda hard
You share vulnerability — but strategically.
You reveal pain — but only after it’s been reframed, packaged, or turned into insight.
Why?
Because full, unfiltered emotional expression would make you dependent on someone else’s safety, attunement, and care. And that feels like death.
So you:
- Offer emotion
ChatGPT
A deep and emotionally attached love relationship will re-awaken their core terror because it re-constellates the experience of emotionally needing another human being. Because of this, people who are caught in this survival pattern often avoid falling deeply in love.
Steven Kessler • The 5 Personality Patterns: Your Guide to Understanding Yourself and Others and Developing Emotional Maturity
If you’re avoidant, you connect with romantic partners but always maintain some mental distance and an escape route. Feeling close and complete with someone else—the emotional equivalent of finding a home—is a condition that you find difficult to accept.
Amir Levine • Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love
AVOIDANCE. Avoidance is usually about fear. Emotions and relationships have hurt me, so I will minimize emotions and relationships. People who are avoidant feel most comfortable when the conversation stays superficial. They often overintellectualize life. They retreat to work. They try to be self-sufficient and pretend they don’t have needs. Often,
... See moreDavid Brooks • How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
For some of us, the fear of intimacy overpowers the desire for it. It feels safer to be alone or in relationships where we are “unemotionally involved” than it does to be emotionally vulnerable, close, and loving. I understand that. In spite of the range of needs and wants that go unmet when we don’t love, it may feel safer to not love. We don’t ri
... See moreMelody Beattie • Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself (Revised and Updated)
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