A Tale of Two Romantic Scenarios
In this first romantic scenario, you feel confident and comfortable with who you are. You are relaxed talking with new attractive people that you meet. When you are on a first date with a new person, you are able to be your natural self. You feel relaxed and yet have a sense of excitement. You are not worrying about whether the other person likes you. Instead, you are noticing how you feel being with the other person. You're noticing if you enjoy being with the person, whether or not you're having fun, how the conversation flows, and so on. You're noticing your overall sense of being with the person. At the same time, you're not thinking about things too much. You're mainly in the flow of the moment.
Over the coming weeks, after sharing a variety of experiences together and seeing how things feel, you come to a clear conclusion about your level of compatibility and whether things feel right. If you conclude that there isn't sufficient compatibility to get involved, you move on knowing that there is more love out in the world for you. You are comfortable not settling for someone who doesn't feel right. If things do feel good and right, you decide to start a relationship with the person with your eyes wide open, seeing the person clearly. You continue the relationship, able to express yourself and your feelings fully and be your natural self. If things continue to feel sufficiently wonderful over time, you make decisions to take things to higher and higher levels, as far as you want to go. This is a lovely scenario.
A Less Happy Romantic ScenarioNow, let's look at another romantic scenario. In this second scenario, there are many possible branch points. You might notice an interesting person looking at you, but you quickly shy away avoiding eye contact and an opportunity is missed (even though this happened in a safe setting). On another occasion an interesting person starts talking to you, but you feel very uncomfortable and stammer and do not know what to say. The encounter comes to an end quickly and disappointingly.
On a first date with a new person, you feel anxious and worry about whether the other person is going to like you. You want very much to be liked and try to do or say things to "get" the other person to like you and win his or her approval. It's very hard to relax and be your natural self. In fact, you are so busy trying to get the other person to like you, you're not noticing how much you like him or her. Sometimes, your awkwardness in this situation is strong enough to cause you to sabotage yourself by coming across as insecure and/or doing or saying inappropriate things (or not doing or saying much at all) leading to the loss of the other person's interest.
Assuming that you do go on multiple dates with the person, you continue to have parts of yourself that you hold back and don't feel comfortable revealing. Over the coming weeks, after sharing a variety of experiences together, a part of you notices some "red flags," behaviors that seem questionable, but you overlook them and get involved anyway. During the relationship, you have a hard time expressing all of your true feelings and can't be your full, truest self. The relationship ends up being a very mixed bag and you are not a happy camper, but it's very hard to leave. You're afraid to give up what you have. Finally, you get out after staying in the relationship way too long and hope that the next relationship will be better.
Whew! Can you relate to any parts of the second scenario? The first scenario obviously seems much healthier, so what causes the differences between the two? The short answer is...fears, limiting beliefs, and other emotional blocks.
Fears and limiting beliefs make it hard to act naturally and be ourselves, embrace opportunities, see things clearly, have the courage to let go of relationships that don't serve us, and cause us to sabotage ourselves.
Next, we will discuss the kinds of fears and limiting beliefs that people have around love, get a better idea of how these fears and limiting beliefs interfere with getting the love we want, and what to do about them.
Understanding how your fears hold you back from the love you wantEarlier I described two very different romantic scenarios. One was happy, healthy, and progressing beautifully. The other was full of fear and trouble. Which feels more like your experience?
We are now going to look at common fears and limiting beliefs around love and how they cause us to sabotage ourselves when meeting new people and when developing a new relationship.
The first thing to realize is that even though there is a part of you that greatly longs for finding and being with the love of your life, there is another part of you that is scared of it as well. In fact, you are probably not even aware of all the fears that you have around love that are getting in your way!
This is true for most people. These fears create a push/pull experience where one part of you is moving in the direction of healthy love and the other part is putting on the brakes and holding you back. Before we go into detail about fears and limiting beliefs, let's start by looking at what is necessary for healthy dating and love.Healthy dating and relationships
In order to have good, successful dating and relationship experiences, you need to be comfortable truly being yourself, be open and friendly, and have a heart fully open to love. If both people are being this way, then you will be able to really know the other person and how it feels to be together. There won't be anything in the way of connecting with each other, and there won't be any hindrances to coming up with a clear conclusion of your compatibility.
In truth, you really only want to get involved with someone who feels like a good fit with you, don't you? The only way to tell is if both people are being themselves. Unfortunately, if you have had a hard time finding your partner, chances are that there are a number of hindrances to being yourself.
Fears around loveSo, what kinds of fears might you have around love? Here are some of the common ones:
• Afraid of being rejected
• Afraid of getting hurt
• Afraid of losing yourself
• Afraid of being controlled
• Afraid of losing control
• Afraid of being alone
• Afraid of being abandoned
• Afraid of being engulfed or invaded
• Afraid of not being loveable
• Afraid of failing at love
Finding Love Exercise – Fears Around Love
It's very helpful to make a list of all of the fears that you have around love. Write down in your journal or notebook all of the fears from this list that you feel apply to you and any other fears that came up while thinking about love. You will be adding to this list as you get in touch with additional fears down the road. These fears around love will need to be addressed in order have the ultimate love that you want.
Limiting beliefs around loveIn addition to fears, limiting beliefs about what is possible can be a significant obstacle. Here are some of the more common ones:
• All the good ones are taken
• I'm not worthy of love
• I'm not good enough to be loved by someone I really want
• I'm too old
• There are not enough (wo)men to go around
• I'm not good at relationships
• I'm not attractive enough to find a good partner
• Men aren't interested in committing
• Men are only interested in sex
• Women are more interested in my money than in me
• There are not enough people in my area.
These kinds of limiting beliefs can be very discouraging and cause you to feel constricted and hold back or even be avoidant around dating or trying to start a relationship. It can give you a pessimistic air, which is not very attractive when dating.
Finding Love Exercise – Negative Beliefs Around LoveWrite down any negative beliefs that you have around dating and love. Again, these will need to be addressed in order to have the love you want.
How Fears and Limiting Beliefs Affect Dating and Relationships
Let's look specifically at how fears and limiting beliefs can interfere with connecting with desirable people and develop healthy relationships with them. We'll re-examine the difficult romantic scenario from this perspective.
First of all, limiting beliefs like "all of the good ones are taken" or "I'm not attractive enough to get a good partner" could potentially stop you at the earliest possible point in the process of finding your love--putting yourself out there. If you stay home most of the time and/or avoid contact with people in public, nothing will be able to happen.
If you have an underlying fear of getting hurt, you may get anxious when an attractive person talks to you. You can also get anxious if you have an underlying belief that you are not worthy of love. Being anxious makes it very hard to be relaxed and be yourself. Not feeling worthy of love or feeling unlovable will cause you to try and "be lovable" to the other person. This means trying to do things that you think the other person may like. Needless to say, you are not being yourself in this situation. This also makes you come across as needy and/or insecure, which may be a turn-off to the other person. What you really want is for the other person to just like you, not to have to do things to "try to be likable."
Please note that many good people suffer from the limiting belief that they are not lovable deep down. There's this sense that if you really knew me, you wouldn't love me. If you identify with this at all, you are not alone. The thing is, it is not the truth of who you are! The belief comes from childhood wounds, which can be healed with EFT and TAT. You would then be in touch with the goodness that all of your friends see in you.
Let's look a little further a tthe unhappy romantic scenario. If you have a fear of being alone, you might tend to overlook "red flag" questionable behaviors in order to have someone to be with. This could result in getting into an unhealthy relationship and make it hard to leave it later.
Protecting Yourself By Avoiding Getting Emotionally InvestedThere is another way that your fears can affect your love life. Your fears may cause you to get together with people that you are not very excited about. They may be nice, good people that you can enjoy being with, but you know that they are not the one for you. You do this subconsciously as a way of protecting yourself from getting hurt, but you'll never be satisfied. You'll stay safe but uninspired.
It is also possible to find someone great but keep your heart protected by staying reserved and not letting yourself get emotionally invested. Clearly, this will sabotage the relationship in the long run.
Finding Love Exercise – Your Romantic ScenarioRead over the original unhappy romantic scenario with your own list of fears and limiting beliefs and see how some of them could have an impact on your dating and being in a relationship.
Now, thinking about how all your fears and limiting beliefs can affect your dating and relationship life can seem a bit overwhelming at first. However, knowledge is power! Without knowing all of things holding you back, you would never be in a position to do anything about them.
The great news is that every single fear and limiting belief that you may have can be addressed with the Energy Psychology techniques EFT and TAT. Each fear and limiting belief can be released one by one until you are free of all of them.
This process doesn't have to take too long either. Yes, it will take some work, but it will be a LOT less work than a series of unsuccessful dating and relationship experiences. You will then be able to have the relationship of your dreams.
There is a wonderful side benefit to working through your fears and limiting beliefs as well. You see, these fears and limiting beliefs have been affecting more than just your dating and relationship life. After working through them you will be a much happier, self-loving, and freer person in general.
Next, we will look at how the Law of Attraction impacts your love life and how to make it work for you instead of against you.