No matter how old you are once you get burned in the love relationship department, you know what pain is.  Sometimes the pain is in the pride, but deep emotional pain really does make it feel like your heart is cracking in two. There is some real searing pain in that! And as the saying goes, once you step too close to the fire and get burned, you tend to shy away from fire and maybe even avoid it.

Look at yourself.  If you are love shy or a commitment-phobe, do you have a pattern? Do you avoid relationships altogether of the love variety staying either celibate or going in for meaningless flings?  Or maybe you do have relationships but you protect your heart and wall your emotions off.  Or perhaps you leave when things get too close before the other person can leave you.

Once you know your pattern, you’ll understand yourself better. If you are scared to move forward because of the possibility of pain, it will take away your future joy.

It really does come down to deciding what you want. Do you truly want a spouse or a significant other in your life that is a true partner and the love of your life?  Or maybe what you want is someone you can just have fun with but doesn’t actually share your life. You’ll have to look deeply at the WHY in order to be clear to see what’s holding you back. When we protect ourselves too deeply, we wall ourselves off. And it generally it isn’t for our highest good and best outcome if we do anything out of fear, barring running away from something or someone that is definitely bad for us.

So take a little time, look at your patterns and then decide what you want your life to look like. In your heart of hearts, what kind of loving relationship would you bring you joy? Don’t let fear or lack of self-confidence get in your way here. You are just dreaming and wishing at this point. But once you know what you want, your life will start moving in a different direction.  And if you need help to work things through, make sure you ask for it. There are plenty of good therapists and life coaches out there, including me, that can help you transform and grow your confidence and love of self so you can attract to you the person that is everything you want.