In our lives, especially the American society we grew up in, we go about our business doing all sorts of things that go against our true desires and needs. Why do we do this? Through the process of socialization, we lose touch with our true essence (i.e. our emotions) and begin to focus too much in the external world, everything that is “out there”, everything that is physical and only what we can visually see with our eyes. When we do this for long enough, we forget the truth of this universe which is that of oneness. We get “lost in the matrix” so to speak. We begin to feel disconnected from other people and as a result we get lost in the illusion of separation so we fight to keep ourselves separate. We begin to adopt all sorts of painful beliefs and put up walls which prevent us from being able to connect on a deeper level with ourselves and with other people. If you’ve ever experienced being “stonewalled” by somebody in your life or someone “ghosting” you, you know exactly what I’m talking about! It’s not fun, is it? It’s very painful and it just keeps reinforcing our negative beliefs about relationships, making us suppress and block ourselves off emotionally in order to prevent from getting hurt again in the future. It starts this whole vicious cycle of pain and torture which we then start to associate with “love” and the two concepts become too intertwined for us to be able to tell the difference anymore.
The main point I want to make here is that sometimes, it has nothing to do with other people, but rather has mainly to do with what we ourselves are doing which keeps us from receiving love. What sucks even more is that we don’t even recognize all of the ways in which we are doing this! Thus, our personal issues and unhealed wounds and traumas from our past keep resurfacing and “haunting us” and because we’re not consciously aware of this dynamic going on within us, we keep repeating the same dysfunctional relationship patterns over and over and over again. It’s no wonder we have a whole nation of people who now can’t form truly loving relationships in the 21st century.
But believe it or not, there is still hope! By simply becoming aware of some of the ways in which we unconsciously keep love out, we will be able to dissolve our barriers to love. This is so important in us being able to lead happy and fulfilling lives. So, let’s dive deeper into the processes that are taking place which leave us dumbfounded about why we’re experiencing a lack of love in our lives. Here are the 3 of the biggest, most common barriers that are responsible for creating havoc in our love lives:
- Inauthenticity:
In the process of socialization, our authentic selves are normally hidden as we are taught that certain aspects of our personalities are unacceptable, so our personalities are in essence, fake. We reject the socially unacceptable aspects of ourselves which were formed for various reasons such as having had to conform to very specific cultural norms and values that may have not been a true expression of our authentic selves, or having grown up in quite literally an unsafe home environment. If you think this doesn’t sound like you or your situation, that’s because you don’t even know yourself very well yet because it actually takes a great amount of self-awareness to be truly able to – unless if you are a spiritual guru of some sort. Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that we did all of this as a way of protecting ourselves, in order to keep ourselves safe, at a time when we didn’t know how to cope with the negative feelings, and with all of the “crazy happenings” around us. As a result, we are not genuinely authentic and don’t reflect what is real about us to the world. Inauthenticity is one of the greatest barriers to love because in that state, we are not offering the truth of ourselves up to someone so we’re not even giving people the opportunity to love us (Swan, 2019). It is often due to fear of rejection or getting hurt, to give you an example. As applied to a relationship between two lovers, Sartre explains that “the consciousness of authentic love relations no longer try to usurp their beloved’s freedom”, whereas normally a partner unconsciously makes their beloved’s freedom subservient to their own, preventing true love to continue to grow (Rae, 2012).
2. Traps of the Ego:
Another common barrier to love is being too trapped in one’s ego due to reasons such as trust issues, and therefore becoming too attached to our sense of separate selves or too identified with what we do. When this happens, we become confused about our identity. We don’t technically know who we really are in order to be loved for who we really are (Swan, 2019). Also, when we buy into the traps of the ego, convincing us that we are separate, we cannot undoubtedly recognize love and unity with others and the world through our separate perspectives. One manifestation of this is how most people function in society today, as their idea of what is “normal” and what think will lead them to “success”. Just take a look at all of the craze going on every single day over the concept of “becoming independent” and being able to single-handedly succeed in school, get rich, and (if you are a girl, be a ‘sex-doll’ and ‘wifey material’ at the same time), whilst simultaneously excelling in a professional career and making sure you stay healthy and fit and strong – Oh, but don’t forget about your social life because being ‘well-rounded’ is the number one most valued quality to possess in America today. You get the point. To sum it up shortly, in our society today we often become obsessed with the idea of becoming independent. However, this is yet another trap of the ego because we forget that we live in an interdependent universe and are in fact dependent on other people. I’m not going to get into all the ‘nitty gritty’ details regarding this, but let’s just say that even from a scientific standpoint, humans are not biologically fit to survive without being socially dependent on one another. But it doesn’t stop there! On top of all of this, the ego’s biggest attachment is to seeing itself as good, therefore denying or suppressing feelings inferior – such as shame or guilt.. In order to avoid feelings of shame, for instance, we naturally try to maintain our self-concept of being good, which automatically makes ‘the other person’ the bad one. We fail to recognize ourselves in them and relate to them and think of all of the things we have in common. Instead, we latch on to the idea that they are wrong in the viewpoint and we are always right, and we think of all of the ways that they are different, and ‘just don’t understand us’. It’s this whole “me (or us) vs. them” mentality. This creates a major barrier to love because it makes relationships nearly impossible. Essentially, we’re living a lie, in order to avoid the reality of whatever situation we’re facing in our life, that we think will bring about pain. According to Kernberg, when we fail to distinguish ourselves from our own ego and imaginary conceptualization of others, it can give rise to mental issues such as narcissistic personality disorder (Kernberg, 1974). Lastly, our ego, often takes control over us instead of the other way around. The ego’s desire for preservation of identity often locks us into survival mode, where we are living off of our fears, anxieties, and judgements; therefore, preventing positive emotional states such as love from reaching us.
3. Our False Definition of Love:
We often have a false definition of love, due to how we were raised by our parents or the society we grew up in. What we think love is is often linked to our negative subconscious associations with it. This subconscious definition of love can also be a byproduct of attachment issues or abusive relationship dynamics that were taking place in our home environment, growing up. When we experience some kind of trauma linked to our caregivers, whom we associated with “home”, it begins to become normalized and our new concept of love and how we form relationships throughout our life will be based on that. So now, when we form relationships that mimic the abusive patterns or dysfunctional family dynamics we are used to seeing, we fall into the illusion of thinking it is love to stay connected to someone regardless of what they do or don’t do to us, instead of seeing it for what it really is – which is abuse. Our negative associations with love also tends to lead to formulating painful beliefs about love, such as “It only happens in fairy tales” so that is what we end up manifesting in our reality – situations and experiences that reflect our own painful beliefs. This can then easily turn into a reoccurring self-fulfilling prophesy. We also often confuse love with attachment in our romantic relationships, not knowing that intense attraction is not enough because for a truly loving relationship to flourish we need conscious compatibility and commitment (Bergner, 2000). As you can see, all of our misconceptions about what love is tend to create major barriers in us actually receiving love.
Bibliography: Bergner, R. M. (2000). Love and Barriers to Love. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 54(1), 1. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2000.54.1.1 Kernberg, O. F. (1974). Barriers to Falling and Remaining in Love. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 22(3), 486-511. https://doi.org/10.1177/000306517402200302 Rae, G. (2012). Sartre on authentic and inauthentic love. Existential Analysis, 23(1), 75+. Retrieved from https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/apps/doc/A288874175/HRCA?u=txshracd2598&sid=HRCA&xid=a47e8eec Swan, T. (2020). What is love? Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://tealswan.com/resources/articles/what-is-love-r241/ Swan, T. (2020). Your definition of love is wrong. Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://tealswan.com/resources/articles/what-is-your-definition-of-love-r274/ Swan, T. (2020). Is love enough? Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://tealswan.com/resources/articles/is-love-enough
