If you always find yourself making Love Mistake No 1, chances are you’re also making Love Mistake No 2.
That is, you act out of FEAR – and are controlled by fear – instead of acting out of love and have love direct all your words, actions and behaviours.
What’s the difference?
The difference is like night and day. Most people don’t even realize just how opposite fear- based and loved- based actions are – or even know which of their actions are love-based or fear-based.
Love Based Actions
Taking action out of love means that you do something (e.g. contacting someone you have feelings for) because you’re motivated by that fantastic energy and feeling of love – and nothing else.
People who act out of love act directly, openly, honestly and from a place of generosity of heart and spirit. Their actions have no conditions and no expectations on how their love should be perceived or received. They just feel good (and in love) and want to share their good feeling of love with someone they love. But more importantly, they let the other person receive and respond to their love actions in the other person’s own way, own time and own space. No grasping. No desperately trying to hold on to, own or control.
As a result, people who act out of love feel happy and secure with their decisions, choices and actions. They’re not so overly worried about which carefully crafted words, actions and behaviours get a “a good reaction” because their relationships happen primarily along the flow of harmonious positive energy.
Fear Based Actions
Taking action out of fear means that that you doing something (e.g. contacting someone you have feelings for ) because you feel you NEED to do it. That’s why it’s called “neediness” and people who act from this “need” called “needy.”
The feeling that you NEED to take action (do/say something) comes from a place of fear. You unconsciously (or consciously) think that if you don’t take some action something negative will happen … she’ll lose interest… he’ll meet someone else… she’ll think you’re not into her… he’ll take you for granted etc.
People who take fear-based actions not only expect something in return (and have in their minds what, how and when) they also doubt and second guess themselves – a lot! They drive themselves crazy trying to figure out the exact right way to say/do something and “get a good/positive reaction”. But even after executing their carefully crafted words or calculated actions, they generally feel uneasy, anxious, worried, fearful… of something negative that’ll will happen.
In my experience as coach, “fear-driven” people are the hardest to work with because they believe that if they just “said it right or did it right” they’d get someone to love them.
They keep trying to “make someone love them” and any advice to stop acting from need and fear and start acting out of love instead just doesn’t get in. At this point many disappear from coaching.
In their minds, what I’m telling them to do is really bad love advice. What if they start acting out of love and something negative happens… like… she loses interest… he meets someone else… she thinks he’s not into her… he takes her for granted etc.
Many have been running on NEED and fear for so long that fear has them believing that there is nothing they can do to change this and so they just keep doing the same fear-based thing over and over and over, and getting the same responses over and over and over – again!
Then when their needy actions have driven the other person away, they come back to coaching with, “Okay Love Doctor… What exactly do I NEED to do to get her back? I want him/her back but I don’t want… her to lose interest… him to meet someone else… her to think I am not into her… him to take me for granted etc”.
Some of these people are the most frustrated men and women because their overly planned, carefully calculated and meticulously executed fear-based actions are still not making the other person fall in love with them. Others end up taking no action at all because they’re paralyzed by fear of something negative happening.
They just don’t get it!
When you act out of fear you create a fear-based relationship, and when you act out of love you create a love-based relationship. It is this simple.
Call it karma, call it the unspoken laws of love, but at some point, in some shape or form, love-based actions will breed love-based relationships, and fear-based actions will breed fear-based relationships (where you’re always afraid that something negative will happen).
Even actions that are at first disguised as love-based actions will eventually show up somewhere down the road as a fear-based relationship. It just takes a small trigger to cause a chain of fear-based reactions.
You can change how you date and relate from fear-based to love-based. As you do, you begin to experience things in a new and loving way. Dating becomes much more pleasant and relationships less frustrating.
Sometimes it takes losing someone you really love for you to really, really get it!!!
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I love all your advice and articles, very helpful.
I’ve certainly made love mistakes 1 & 2 and only recently began a journey of being genuine and acting from conscious and integrity in my relationships with others especially in my romantic/sexual relationships. It’s hard work. I have so many insecurities that it’s sometimes easier to be alone than face my insecurities, feelings of unworthiness and powerlessness.
It’s sad to read that you feel that it’s better to be alone when that’s not what you really want. I think I speak for many when I say “‘we all” have or at least had some kind of insecurity at any one point in our lives. It’s a lot of work going into ourselves and dealing with what is stopping us from living the lives and relationships we were meant to live but it’s very worth it. The most important thing is to get started and keep working on it. Not easy but it’s possible and doable! Giving up and accepting that being alone is better should not be an option, if that’s NOT what you want.
I dont think anyone can ever love without fear. If you love without fear then you’re not loving with all your heart.
Are you sure it’s not the other way round… If you love WITH fear then you’re not loving with all your heart.
There many ancient teachings and even current schools of thought that say that love and fear are the only true wholesome emotions and all other emotions are just sub-emotions of these two. Moreover these wholesome emotions are the exact opposite of the other — and can not co-exist. One drives the other way!
I think that if you love with fear, you deprive yourself of the whole experience of love because you’re holding back part of yourself.
I have recently lost someone who I loved but was unable to show it. We ran on the back foot from the get go, as I was unable to let go of an ex who had betrayed me and hurt me very badly. My recent ex tried to ‘save’ me (her mistake) and that drove me away and get me distancing. After a number of splits initiated by her, i ended it last spring, but then regretted it. I saw that she was really a lovely woman, but I saw it too late. I am now in analysis trying to get to the bottom of my fears, my anxiety and to heal that terrible hole in my heart that has ruined all my relationships. My ex is with someone else now, and seems to be really happy and it is such a pain to lose her but I have to suck it up and use this to grow. I am practicsing being open with some new girls I have met, telling them where I’m at and speaking from the heart and so far it’s only having positive reactions. I can see that revealing who I am doesn’t make someone run for the hills! haha
And yes, it takes losing someone you really love to finally say ‘enough’! I hope one day I might have another chance with my ex, but I can’t hope for it anymore, and must let go and move on. Thanks for this great website.
I wasn’t loved as a child (verbally abused horribly) and feel the anxiety from that every single day. I have been working on self-love and self-acceptance for a long time now (I am now 44 with past girlfriends, but they all resulted in sex-anxiety and anxious/preoccupation issues that pushed those girls away.
I am scared that I have such deep seeded issues that I can’t get to them. I cry practically every day about my inability to make and keep friends because of my issues. I can’t afford therapy and when I did go to therapy, I could never connect with he doctor.
Are there some people (like me) who are so far damaged that any chance of reversal are slim to none? I read a lot of self help books and am working very hard, but I always fall back into numbness and detachment. I’m horrible at socializing and usually its aggressive, damaged girls that pursue me, so I find them that way (they are the worst for my attachment type). What should I do?
I’m saddened reading your story. No one should have to feel this way. Yes, there are people like you everywhere, more than you can possibly imagine. I know that’s no comfort, but just know you’re not alone and nothing is so wrong with you despite everything your abusers might have told you.
Your challenges need professional support, beyond what a relationship coach is trained/mandated to provide. Reading self-help books is good, but I personally believe you’d do much better working with someone who can provide you with specialized/individually tailored help. A good therapist/counsellor may be able to help you work through the childhood issues preventing you from experiencing the love you seek — and need.
Without meaning to pile on someone who has been beat down so many times already, I personally believe that any change to your experiences begins and ends with YOU. Yes, you may have had a crappy childhood which you are not personally responsible for, but you are 100% responsible for how you allow or not allow this experience to define and control your life. Most people in this situation, act as if they are helpless to change anything — and most times they are — not because they can’t change things but because it’s easier to blame someone, something outside oneself than to face the responsibility for change.
It all starts with learning response- ability! Once you own this, it’s yours to change (and change you will). But as long as you still make it someone else’s, they own it and they own you.
I wish I could’ve been of more help but I’m just a relationship coach.
I am currently reading your e-book and it’s soo helpful thank you! I made love mistake #2 and with the help of your book and articles am learning how to act out of love. I contacted my ex, he broke up with me, and we had our first lunch date yesterday.It was soo much fun and it ended by him saying we should do this more often. I admit I was hoping for a text today from him saying it was nice seeing me but I went back to your book and realized I was reacting out of fear that he wouldn’t contact me ever again! I will follow your suggestions and wait to contact him again.
I’m glad you’re finding the eBook helpful. Also glad that you saw your own thinking and self-corrected. I wish you all the best.
Ingrid, Which eBook are you reading? I am guilty of fear-based behavior and would like to stop living that way. I would be interested in anything that suggests how to stop doing that!