Why is it so fucking hard?

Disclaimer: Before anyone gets any ideas; I am not talking about romantic love here. I’m still figuring out if I may actually be aromantic. Keep your eyes peeled for that exploration. But DO NOT comment or message with well meaning notes on how there is someone out there for me and how I’ll find my one true love. I find that vomit inducing and patronising. I am single because I want to be and it has nothing to do with my capacity for being loved. OK. Let’s start…

I have a very easy time loving people. And animals. I love hard and almost violently. Some of the friendships I’ve made in the past few years have started like that: I met the person and *boom* I loved them. Immediately adopted into the family. Others have grown a little more slowly, but the intensity is the same: VIOLENCE. I want to squeeze the living fuck out of them and would kill for these people. Very easily. The more I love, the more capacity I have for love, too. It just multiplies endlessly and leads to more love for humanity as well. As long as I don’t have to meet them all.

Being loved? No, thank you.

Being loved is a whole different ballgame. It feels SO uncomfortable. Those people I talked about? And a whole bunch of older friends? They love me BACK! With the same intensity! They unequivocally match my energy. To them I say: WHAT THE FUCK??? WHY???

I’m unlovable

Now, on a rational level, I know I’m not unlovable. I’m as lovable as everyone else (yes, I think there are exceptions, but let’s not dwell on that for now) and I DESERVE to be loved and cherished and supported and to have my energy matched. Emotionally, though? Everything screams no. Loudly.

It’s the familiarity, the comfort zone that isn’t comfortable. Except… I have always been loved. I guess I have been disappointed by people I loved just as much and that stings. This whole thing is hard to wrap my head around. Maybe that’s the whole point, maybe it’s just a matter of the heart. Yeah, well, my Moon in Gemini doesn’t care. We need to intellectualise it, so here we are. AND I’ve also just said that my emotions are the ones running amok trying to accept love, haven’t I? What a wild ride being human is.

So, on many levels, I feel unlovable. I cannot hold all that love. So much so that I start crying, no, sobbing uncontrollably when someone openly expresses their love to me. Thankfully, this often happens in writing or in video calls, so I can turn off my camera for a while. Which, if you know me, isn’t something I usually do for shedding tears. I am very comfortable crying in front of people and being vulnerable. Being loved out in the open, though? That feels like I’m naked and exposed and clothes or any kind of cover are nowhere to be found. Vulnerability squared, so to speak. Ugh.

The things I’ve done

It’s not just about the inability, discomfort or unfamiliarity of holding and receiving all that love. In the back of my mind, there are also all the things I have done and the thoughts I have thought and the things I haven’t done that “disqualify” me for love. There is another draft somewhere here that talks about how I’m a recovering bigot. As much as I have forgiven myself for (almost) all of it and shame is not something I experience much anymore (unless I fuck up, obviously), it feels like there is a weight behind my (in)actions that keeps me below the imaginary lovable threshold. In this way, shame has very much done a number on me.

Connecting with my witchcraft and having daily and seasonal rituals have definitely helped me chip away at this, but I can’t deny it’s still there and it still makes it hard for me to feel lovable.

Expectations and loyalty

Then there are the expectations tied to love. Society has a certain set of expectations when it comes to love. Unconditional love belongs to the family, no matter how harmful that may turn out to be. The biggest love belongs to a romantic partner and you need to isolate yourself from the outside world once you’ve found this unicorn of a human being that perfectly matches you. And BOY are you expected to give up your whole life and identity when you become a parent, especially if you’re the one giving birth to a child. Of course, these are overgeneralisations and simplifications, but that’s the backdrop against which I’m looking at being loved.

Where in those expectations is there space for friendships? For the love of community? Well, community isn’t supposed to be a thing in the first place; you’re supposed to be able to do everything on your own – or with your partner, but don’t you rely on them! – and buy community care rather than receive it for free. Friendships seem to be a weird format of relationship today. To me, whose core family has been dead for over a decade, friendships are THE relationship in my life, though. It’s the label for my chosen family.

Said label already makes it difficult. When I see how willy nilly people throw around the word friend, I wonder if they don’t even know what friendship means anymore. Have you not heard of colleagues, acquaintances and neighbours? Why are we not distinguishing between all of these roles??? There can also be friends and close friends. But throwing them all together in the same cauldron and calling them friends makes me want to scream.

Because if you call THAT person a “dear friend”, someone who clearly only wants access to you and isn’t actually a friend, and you call me the same, someone who SHOWS THE FUCK UP for you in the best and the worst of times… what am I supposed to make of that? It doesn’t make sense. It’s okay to call people acquaintances or even good acquaintances, or just colleagues or neighbours. Not everybody needs to be your friend.

With all of that being said, I put a certain energy into my relationships and pretty much expect the same in return. That doesn’t mean that I don’t understand if someone has phases (and long phases, too), throughout which they can’t communicate much because they’re overwhelmed or their disabilities are taking up all of their energy. I am that person A LOT, so I get it. I have things like emojis in place for times like that. I’ll throw a heart your way and you’ll know I’m thinking of you, even when I can’t articulate it in the moment. But when it comes to loyalty and knowing you’ve got my back? That has to be unshakable. And for some people it just isn’t. That’s when I don’t feel loved and it’s a stone’s throw to unlovable town from there.

Another layer of this is when I hear you talk about your “friends” and it’s negative. That doesn’t happen in my book. If I start talking negatively about a friend, I know it’s over or we at the very least need to have a serious conversation. I will talk about feeling worried for a friend – without going into details unless they know each other and of the difficulties – and seek advice or reassurance. But complaining??? No. That’s not love for me. If you have a problem with me, address it with me directly. I live by that and I love like that, so I will address problems with the person in question. I will never say anything about anyone to people that I would not also tell them to their face.

So here’s another question: Does that make me unlovable?

Autism and love

Then there is autism. I’ve recently been officially diagnosed, so now I am Certified Autistic™️. Should probably put that in my credentials somewhere. #AutisticPeopleDon’tUnderstandSarcasm What that means is that my brain generally doesn’t always understand the expectations attached to different relationships. I don’t even know how to initiate contact because what do you mean, YOU CONNECT OVER SMALL TALK??? That’s my worst nightmare and I could never. Small talk is useles words strung together for no other purpose than to fill a void with words. To not feel awkward, apparently, but that’s when I feel most awkward. I feel most at ease when I meet someone with whom I can immediately dive deep into some subject. Which is why I mostly meet people online through common interests. You could call them special interest groups, I guess. That’s how I make friends and then eventually we meet in person and yay, we are friends for life now. Sometimes, those relationships stay acquaintances, though, and that’s okay.

Thinking of neighbours and – in hindsight – colleagues… those are not relationships leading anywhere. They have a purpose and when that purpose has run its course (someone moves house/company), that relationship is over. There are exceptions, surely, but so far I have yet to experience them. Eventually, those “friendships” fizzle out and I’m usually not crying over them. Now, there is a case for community living and especially connecting to your neighbours more, which is something I’m actively exploring. But this post is about love, so let me not get into that.

Okay, so I’ve made a friend, we’ve met and shared some of our deepest feelings, interests and trauma. At this point, I have developed love. Friendship love. The question is: Have they, too? And how do I know? My only reference points are how I’m showing up and how, in turn, I have certain expectations from them. However, they may have some different ways in which they show their love, which are by no means “worse” than mine, but I may not recognise them as such. The dance of figuring it out begins. Until I have figured it out (please everyone just say outright, “I love you” and move on), I will now second guess that reciprocity.

So when it comes in forms I didn’t expect but definitely understand, I am immensely shocked. Even more so if it’s in front of other people. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE NOT AFRAID OR ASHAMED OF LOVING ME IN PUBLIC???

Wounds from the past

Aha, so there’s something else. I feel like I’ve been dancing around this. In the past, I have been loved in secret. Some of it was openly because I am fat; which, let me tell you, fucking sucks. It hurt so much I wanted to stop existing altogether. And the hurt still sits deep. A lot of it has been healed, mostly by loving myself and my body fiercely. Most of those instances were in romantic relationships, but there were enough friendships with this phenomenon that it can be called a pattern. It’s something that stays with you for the longest time. When it wasn’t about my fatness, it was about how “radical” I am and how I will not shy away from calling out people’s bigotry, no matter how “close” our relationship is. A whole lot of friends have left me because I finally set some boundaries, had new standards for treating me or have changed in a way that no longer suited their narrative of me. This is where you’ll be on the edge of your seat waiting for the post on abusive friendships. It’s coming. It just takes time.

With that kind of background, no wonder I feel unlovable exactly as I am. And when someone proclaims their love for me (and my brain) openly and even in front of others, I fall apart because I just cannot believe it. Tearing up as I’m writing this.

Allowing love

Going through all of that, I am wondering: How do I allow love in my life then? Well, I guess it’s practice. After all, I have learnt to love myself and that was no mean feat. In fact, that is one thing that a lot of people find intimidating and arrogant about me. It took about half a decade to undo the damage of all of my life before then. It was my Saturn Return that set all of that in motion, if you want an idea of the timing.

Being vulnerable

Some of The Work™️ is being vulnerable. Truth be told, I’ve never found that difficult. As I said, small talk is not something I do, let alone enjoy. So I try to avoid it by asking someone a question like: So what’s your favourite quirk? Yeah, I get a lot of stunned faces, but most people smile and actually think about it. It DOES make for a good conversation starter. Once I gel with someone, I happily shed tears or tell one of my many sob stories. I’ve met a few people in the past twelve months who’ve seen me cry within the first few hours of hanging out together. We were talking about dogs and I lost my beloved Spot just over a year ago, so naturally that pain still sits at the surface; ready to leave my eyes at a moment’s notice. But guess what: Being vulnerable leaves you… vulnerable. Which means people can hurt you easily.

So at the same time, I have walls up. I know this is a contradiction, but you just have to trust me that it’s possible. There are things that I don’t easily share or talk about, even though I may have shared them on the internet for everyone to see, hear and read. It is much more intimate when it happens one to one, especially when it happens because, for example, someone’s seen a scar and asked a curious question about it. These stories often come with tears and reveal very clearly how sensitive I am and how easily I’m hurt. I still don’t shy away from answering those questions; I just don’t necessarily seek out these conversations.

Vulnerability doesn’t mean you’re friends

One thing that vulnerability doesn’t do automatically is make you friends or make you love each other. Sometimes, it evokes the opposite. I have had people seek distance or ghost me entirely after I’ve revealed something about me that they may not have expected. Or that they may have deemed as “too soon” or “too much information”. I know those people are not my people. But it’s still a bit weird.

Then there are groups – like grief circles – that I’m part of or hold space for and there is a whole lot of vulnerability and a whole lot of crying. But no friendship. Just some strangers coming together, being vulnerable and raw, which I find beautiful. There is also always a lot of love in the room, but it’s a generalised love for the humanity in the other, not a personal one that creates intimacy and closeness.

Practice, hey?

I guess where this is heading is experimenting. Throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. Vulnerability is part of that. Opening up and being open. Both for people’s vulnerability and their different ways of showing and experiencing love. It’s a delicate dance. Then continuously letting it happen. Let them show me their love. Let them show up. Asking for help and support – my least favourite form of vulnerability – and receiving it. Over and over. Practice makes progress, I guess. I’m sure I’ll grow my capacity for being loved over time. And who knows, maybe it doesn’t need to feel okay or comfortable. Maybe it’s enough to let it exist and cry over it every single time.

Am I alone, though?

Do you find it easy or hard being loved? What makes it hard for you to accept love in your life? Do you think you need to overcome certain beliefs or behaviours first? Do you think you need to love yourself first before you are ready for love? I would absolutely love to hear your experiences and how all of this lands for you. Let me know in the comments or email me!