Stop Trying To Prove To Them That You’re Worthy of Love
Real, authentic love is not supposed to be earned.
Most of us are not aware of our core beliefs regarding love and relationships. We sleepwalk through life, letting our previous experiences dictate how we feel, think and behave.
If we’re lucky enough, our core beliefs are not that bad: we believe love is unconditional and we’re not chronically afraid of being rejected or abandoned. We’re able to form secure attachments with others and we know how to give and receive love freely.
However, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, our first relationships have taught us that love is not supposed to be freeing, expansive and unconditional. Sometimes we believe, as a result of our past experiences, that love is supposed to be earned.
When this is our core belief, we have the tendency to chase emotionally unavailable people who lack the ability to make us feel safe and secure.
We attract individuals who are inconsistent, unstable and unreliable. Why? Because they prove to us what we already know: that we are not worthy of being loved and respected.
We pursue them. We fight for them. We show them how good we are. We leave our needs behind. We do our best to make them see that we deserve their love and attention.
The problem is, that’s not how authentic love works.
When Inconsistency Is All You Know
It’s no accident that you believe love is something you have to earn. It’s no accident that you attract people who make you feel like you have to prove yourself.
Somewhere along the line, you absorbed the message that love will always be taken away from you when you mess up or make mistakes.
Most importantly, you absorbed the message that love is not unconditional — that it’s something you receive when you perform, when you ignore your authentic self or when you achieve certain goals.
If you’re anything like me, you’re conditioned this way because you grew up in an enmeshed family that wanted you to blindly follow their unhealthy, unreasonable rules, and was completely unable to support your individualization.
As a consequence, you learned the lesson that love is supposed to be inconsistent, unbalanced and unfair — because that’s exactly the type of “love” you’ve experienced.
“Ideally, our parents gave us secure attachments. Secure attachments means we could predict their behavior, we could depend on them to meet our needs (most of the time) and could rely on them to soothe us when we felt scared, confused, or stressed. Secure attachment in childhood results in flexibility, open-mindedness, trust and high self worth.
Insecure attachments means our parents were unpredictable, chaotic, fearful, shut down, or unavailable to meet our needs and help us regulate our emotions. Insecure attachments in childhood results in adult relationships that also unpredictable, don’t meet our needs, and leave us feeling unworthy or like we just perform for love.”
Here’s What Love Really Is
Love has no space for fear, power and control. Love has no space for manipulation and mind games.
Love does not blame you or gaslight you. It doesn’t make you feel like you have to justify every action you take or every decision you make.
Love doesn’t force you to abandon yourself. It encourages your authentic self to come up to the surface.
Love doesn’t make you feel like you’re constantly walking on eggshells. Instead, it creates space for your emotions to flow freely —and it helps you find the courage to express them without fear.
Love doesn’t judge you, nor does it pressure you to meet certain expectations. It supports your growth, regardless of the mistakes you make along the way.
Love will bring up your insecurities, but it will also help you heal them. It will force you to look at your wounds and love them anyway.
So, here’s what I want you to know: if anyone has ever led you to believe that love is something you have to earn, they’re wrong.
True love is never earned — it’s something that is simply there, something that flows without any effort and grows with an everyday mutual, conscious decision.
You don’t have to prove yourself to people who will never be able to appreciate every part of your being. You don’t have to keep yourself small to make others feel safe — because those who truly love you will not feel threatened by your authenticity.
It took me years to realize my people-pleasing behavior was an attempt to feel loved and accepted.
I had no idea it was possible to receive love freely. I believed that I had to give, and give, and give, before I had the right to receive anything in return. I had no idea it was possible to simply receive — with no restraints, expectations or limitations.
This is what happens when we live in emotionally unsafe environments: we do whatever it takes to feel loved, even if that means abandoning ourselves.
The thing is, “love” that comes from abandoning yourself will never be the real, authentic love you deserve. It will never be unconditional if you’re not free to express yourself.