Fear & Love

"It's so easy to get lost with you. It's so warm and comfortable, and it feels safe. And that's the scary part, like I won't know who I am anymore. I know it's gonna be great, and I can't picture it in my mind how it's gonna end, but I just know it's gonna be painful. Does any of that make sense?"

"Yeah, I understand, I guess. But I have two problems with that. Number one, I don't know it's gonna end, and two, you're worth it."

The most important spiritual lesson I learned last year had to do with fear and love. Connecting the two was integral to everything I've learned and taught this past year. This exchange with Navy Guy came a couple of months after we broke up in one of a series of phone calls we had.

We both wanted what we had, and we were equally afraid of losing it. The difference between us came in how we reacted to that fear. I leaned in and he pulled away. Having spent the previous year healing a lot of my own wounds in this area, I was aware of this fear. But I was eager to work through it, and prepared to move forward in spite of it. I knew I could handle it. But he was coming from a different place. He had been through a different kind of trauma, and he hadn’t spent time alone to heal like I had. He didn’t have that time I did, to really get grounded in himself.

Separating from him was painful. It was everything I feared. But it was healing too. The solitude that followed forced me to move through the things that hurt. It also gave me the space to identify the ways I had acted out of fear rather than love. Fear in the fear of losing him, and love in love for myself—and for him—with our own individual needs and desires.

As I began to detach from any future relationship with him that summer, I was talking to people about love and fear. In the comments on TikTok and Instagram, I listened to people talk about their breakups. I noted the same fears in them, women afraid of being alone, and men afraid of failing the woman they love. I saw a little of myself in them.

In response to someone who said, “Right person, wrong time,” I said, “No, it was the right person and the right time. There was a lesson in it. Don’t dismiss the significance of these connections and lose out on the lesson.”

In response to a woman frustrated because she can’t stop thinking about her ex, I have a few responses I’ll drop when I see these comments.

A man will think about you as often as you think about you.

Turn toward yourself. Give yourself the love and attention you want from him. Don’t reject yourself.

As long as you’re hoping he’ll return, you’re not facing forward, and forward is where you need to be in order to have a healthy relationship with anyone.

In response to someone expressing anger and resentment for a man breaking up with her I said, “When you give yourself all the love you deserve, it’s impossible to resent someone else for not doing it for you.”

Christopher Land responded to a comment of mine when I was talking to a man about his avoidant ex. He was angry with her for breaking up with him and I was explaining that I don’t feel anger toward Navy Guy. After he called me delusional, I said, “He’s the one who is stuck in his anxiety. He’s the one who is refusing to face himself and chasing other women to feel better. I only feel sorry for him, not angry.”

Christopher responded, “I agree with you. She is in such fear about having what she really wants, compassion is warranted. I hope she chooses to heal someday.“

In a music video about the feeling of loss after a relationship in which someone was pretending to be something they weren’t, the fear is that this person won’t be loved for who they were, but only who their lover wanted to see. I said, “I knew he was pretending and I saw the man underneath. The tragedy isn’t that I lost him, it’s that he will never know which man I loved.”

It is tragic. I feel sad for all of the people I talk to who are existing in a space of fear following a breakup. It’s fear that they weren’t really loved, or that they never will be again. It’s fear that they’ll never see this person again, or that this person wasn’t who they claimed to be. It’s fear that he or she will love someone else more. This fear is what drives them to lash out in anger on social media, or block their ex to forget them. Fear stands in the way of their ability to hold onto the love they had for them, and in many cases, this is what keeps them from ultimately loving themselves.

“If he wanted to, he would”

A prolific piece of TikTok advice declares that if a man (it’s always directed at men) wanted to be with you, he would move heaven and earth to do it. The intent means well, telling women not to hang their hopes on a man who likely doesn’t want to be with them, but it falls short.

I once broke up with a man because I was afraid. I was young and Mike was incredible. We clicked like I never had with anyone else, with long conversations, walks on the beach at night, and fantastic sex. But it was too good. One day at the grocery store with his kid sister in tow, people smiled at us like she was our daughter and we were a happy young family. I suddenly saw a future with him I wasn’t ready for.

The way I broke it off was the worst thing I’ve ever done to a man. In a panic, fearing a wedding and kids and losing my independence, I cheated on him with his roommate and coworker. I needed to end it, and I needed it to be irreversible. As much as I wanted him, I didn’t want the life I saw coming down the pike, not yet.

Had TikTok been around back then, someone might have said, “If she wanted to, she would.” But that would be inaccurate. So when people said it of Navy Guy, I told them they were being unfair. And I tell people now, it’s not right to characterize someone as the bad guy because they ran from a connection in fear.

Fear causes a lot of behavior that hurts others, but it doesn’t make that fear any less valid. Cheating was wrong, and I don’t excuse myself here at all. But I understand the fear that drives people to do things that go against their character. When we act from a place of fear, we betray ourselves too. I would never cheat again, but I carry the shadow of that with me to remind me of what fear can make me do if I’m not mindful of it.

Everything Comes from Love or Fear

In any moment we’re operating from a place of love or fear. Tipping your waitress with joy because she did a great job… love. Tipping her because you feel like you have to… fear. Defensiveness and anger come from fear. Something is underneath it. You’re afraid of scolding, afraid of being wrong, of what might happen if things don’t go your way. If you turn toward love and release those fears, defensiveness and anger can change.

If my partner tells me I hurt his feelings, I may have one of two reactions: I could deny it, “I did not, how could that have hurt you?” This is my fear. I’m afraid he’s right, that I’ve hurt him, that I’m a hurtful person, that I’m bad or mean and he doesn’t love me.

But in a space of love, I can see him as I see myself in that same place. Of course he’s hurt, even if I didn’t mean to hurt him. I didn’t think about how my words could hurt. But I've hurt him. In love, I’m not afraid. I’m not worried about being bad or mean and I know he loves me. I can hold him in this moment and apologize. If I don’t know what I’ve said that was hurtful, I can ask him to tell me about his feelings. I can ask why what I said struck him. When I understand him better, I can come up with a plan to make sure I don’t cause harm again.

Working From Love Without Fear

Moving into a space of love in all my relationships, I have had to spend more time with my feelings. After Navy Guy, I began to slow my movements, stopping to feel my feelings in my body before acting. I started to track moments of fear.

I felt fear when a man would accuse me of being a narcissistic abuser for “withholding” sex. I had a fear of being abusive because I had believed this about myself for so long. Rather than reacting to him in a snarky comment, though, I sat with the feeling. I asked myself how much of what he was saying was true. I dug into my past to find the wound it was triggering and held onto it for a minute. And then I would think about what it would feel like to come at this from a space of love.

In love, I could look at this man from a new perspective. Maybe, like Navy Guy, he wasn’t a troll. Maybe he was more human than that. Maybe he was afraid of something. Maybe he was a wounded boy who had not experienced real love before. No one taught him what love could be. He expected it to come in the form of sex at his whim and when it didn’t, he felt unloved. And now, he’s projecting that onto me in anger. He's calling me a narcissist for advocating for a woman’s right to say no to sex anytime she wants as a matter of autonomy. Maybe he wasn’t given enough autonomy himself.

It was in this space I could have compassion for him and approach him from a new direction. I wouldn't tell him he was the narcissistic one for accusing me. This time I would ask him if he knew other ways of loving a woman besides having sex with her. I would ask him what other ways she could express love for him.

Not every man was receptive to this conversation, but some of them were. Some men broke down their walls and let me in. Some men told me their fears.

Olive Branches

My oldest kid, age 21, is leaving a job this month. They gave a generous 4 weeks’ notice because they were short handed and would need time to hire and train more people. A couple of weeks later, their boss texted to confirm when their last day would be. My kid texted me to ask me to double check their response.

It was two sentences, one giving their last day, and the other offering that they might be around to help in the future one day in a pinch. The last bit, I knew, was a lie because this job has been especially taxing on them physically and emotionally. This company is notorious for poor working conditions anyway and this store is one of the worst.

I suggested deleting the second sentence and keeping it short. They expressed fear of letting the manager down or leaving on a negative note. The problem is that when we move from a state of fear, we are less authentic. Although it alleviated some fear to offer an olive branch, it wasn’t the truth of how my kid felt in that moment and could set them up for feelings of guilt later when they don’t go back to work there.

If you have to tell someone no, and you say, “No, but,” it’s good to check in with the self and make sure you’re in a space of love. Love is holding to your truth and maintaining boundaries. Offering something you can’t give will cause future pain that might be worse than any pain felt by saying no now.

The power of moving from a space of love is that you are operating in truth, which will often expose fear for others. The person being told no without a but will be forced to accept it. This can wake them up to fears that might have been swept under a rug with your capitulation had you offered them something more. So my kid’s manager might have taken their promise to heart and not faced their own fear of operating short-handed when they’re gone. With the shorter response they have the opportunity to face this fear and get to work finding replacements with more urgency.

Love Exposes Fear

My last night with Navy Guy, I lay in his arms in the dark with a candle glowing from the nightstand. I asked him to tell me more about himself. After another story from his childhood, he marveled at me, “How are you so warm?” He seemed surprised to find me so interested in him as a man.

I giggled (I always giggled with him) “I don’t know, I just like you, I guess.”

I was in his shoes with Mike. I remember looking at him funny when he didn’t make fun of my idiosyncrasies, or nitpick my hair and clothing style like other men had. He was so kind and attentive, to everyone. I wasn’t. I was still figuring myself out and I didn’t know how to fit in, least of all with someone so great. I would ruin it, I knew.

His love exposed all my fears. Everything in me I didn’t want anyone to see came rushing to the surface and I got scared. I understood this about Navy Guy. There were things he didn’t want me to see. My love had shone a light on those parts of him that felt unworthy. There was nothing I could have done to make him feel safe with me. There was nothing Mike could have done to make me feel safe with him, because I didn’t feel safe within myself.

Fear comes from within.

Fear draws from our existing shadows. Like a child in the dark, we can see these shadows in ourselves when love shines a light on them. After Mike, I dated a string of immature men who only wanted a good time, including another Mike I almost married. I never felt that love again and it was safer that way. Those other men didn’t expose my fears. They didn’t make me feel like I wasn’t good enough. They were more like me. It made more sense to be with them.

Navy Guy was my first relationship after my divorce and I didn’t do a great job with him, but the fears he brought up for me were a catalyst to healing and I look for them now in other people. Rather than run from people who strike fear in me, I gravitate toward them as a matter of growth. I want to be triggered, activated, pressed, until fear is scorched out of me. I don’t want relationships that are easy and fun as long as I’m someone else. I want relationships that see me for who I am and push me to be more of myself.

This year has brought new people into my life, and a couple of old friends have returned. We’re having deeply intimate conversations about love and connection, emotional and mental health, spiritual and worldly issues that have an impact on our growth. The friends who are still living on the surface have chosen to step back, and I support them from a distance now. And moving from a space of love now, I can receive the people who are willing to stay, and let go and detach from the people who aren’t.

Music I’m listening to right now