The Depths You Love Is Equal To Your Willingness For Pain

Some would rather not love at all than risk the pain associated with getting close to someone. For the avoidantly attached, this subconscious belief is the very reason these individuals withdraw from emotional connections the moment a relationship depends or someone expresses interest. They fear to love, and so they push it away.

Love is portrayed as something that is easy, but in reality, it’s far from it. It forces us to open up, face wounds, and work with someone else through theirs. It holds the potential to mend a heart and in a second, break it. It is a complex, living entity, that requires care and attention far beyond what we may think.

It might be a difficult truth to hold — that love brings with it pain, but there is always the potential for love to go south. Is that an anxiety-driving thought? Potentially — but it’s reality.

I wanted to take today's article to talk about love and pain. How the two come in tandem, and how believing otherwise can set us up for several problems down the line.

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Important Realizations In Knowing Love Hurts

In order to love fully and honestly, you need to recognize that there is always the potential for love to fail, and that’s okay. This doesn’t mean we need to approach it from an angle of pessimism — as some scarred will do, but with the acknowledgment that in opening ourselves up, there will always be a risk for pain.

This brings in an important question about how capable we are to manage pain. Part of the reason I took heartache so difficult in the past was that my ability to handle pain was non-existent. I didn’t feel great about myself to begin with, and so in experiencing rejection, or simple incompatibility, I would crumble.

Living a life on a tightrope where everything and anything will rock us is no way to live. Part of my personal growth work has been in strengthening my emotional resiliency so that these life events — that will naturally hurt — don’t send me overboard on a rocky ship.

What Happens When We Fail To Accept Pain

When we live in fear of pain we become insecure. Both anxious and avoidant attachment styles are born from fear.

On one hand, an avoidant partner (as noted above) may push love away from the fear of experiencing intimacy. This is a defense behavior they engage in to protect themselves. It is the memory of pain from a past love that pushes them to avoid love now from fear of the same pain in the future. This is their way of avoiding the risk of pain that comes with love.

Anxious individuals are the opposite. They too fear pain but approach the potential of pain through a different lens. They instead pull love closer. They overcompensate, people-please, and cling to their partners to feel reassured that they won’t be hurt. Ironically, their attempts at keeping love close are often futile as the behaviors they engage to keep love close only push their partner away.

You could say then that individuals with secure attachment styles are the ones who are comfortable with loving and holding pain. They accept that love may not end well, but also know that whatever the outcome may be, they’ll be ok with it.

Ultimately, fear of pain drives us into overcompensating or undercompensate in an attempt to avoid it. Both behaviors ultimately fail in their attempts at keeping us from feeling it.

The Only Way Out Is Through

There is no facing love, and I mean truly facing love, without having to open up to the potential of pain. If this is something that scares you, or if the above relates to you, it’s time to get honest as to what you’re fearing.

Are you fearing rejection, and in light of it, feeling like you’re unworthy? Do you use love as a measuring point of your worth? On that note, has society or other conditioned you into believing your worth is tied to someone else interest?

Have you previously experienced pain and are afraid of feeling that way again? Have you loved someone only to have your heart broken?

There can be numerous reasons why we fear pain and our bodies remember past trauma — even if our minds have seemingly forgotten it. We may approach love optimistically only to experience violent physical reactions indicative of fight or flight when we get too close.

It’s down to us then to learn to manage our anxieties. Some may resort to changing others as a means to make themselves feel better, but that is only a short-term solution. I believe developing your emotional resiliency and learning to challenge and manage your anxiety is one of the greatest skills you can develop. It will serve you in every area of life, relationships included.

The art of doing so, however, is far from easy — but by no means impossible. I’ve written numerous articles on this subject, you can see a few of them below.

When we increase our capacity to withstand pain, we allow ourselves the freedom to truly love. I hope this article has been helpful.

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