You’re strong and independent. You’ve been saying you don’t need anyone in your life for years, and it’s a fact. But now life has thrown your world upside down by letting you meet someone who seems like they could bring joy and happiness to your life and make you feel love. Yikes. Being able to rely on someone is a gift but it’s also really scary. Why is that?
- You’ve got to be vulnerable. You can’t show your steel armor to the world anymore. Now someone can see through it. There will be times when you need help or want their support, and expressing this can feel like you’re trying to swallow razor blades. It might feel like being open to receiving their help when you’re stuck on the side of a road with a flat tire or sick in bed with a bad cold is a weak move, but it’s not. Sometimes it’s nice to feel supported and loved by the person in our life. It’s okay to rely on someone even if it is terrifying.
- You have to be willing to trust. Being able to trust someone isn’t easy. All these years, you’ve only trusted yourself completely. Now to have to extend some of that trust to another person is terrifying! They could lie to you and break your trust. They could break your heart and bring you drama you don’t need in your life.
- You can get badly burned. It’s not just the breaking of your trust and heart that’s at risk here. The person could really damage you. You might have experienced this in the past with a previous partner who hurt you so much it took you a long time to rebuild yourself and your life. The idea of having to face that in the future is scary and overwhelming, not forgetting how exhausting it can be.
- You have to carry the load. When you’re dealing with your own stuff and handling your drama, it’s all on you. When you let someone in to help you carry the load, now you have to depend on them and rely on them to do things in the best way. This sometimes requires compromise, which isn’t easy to do if you’ve become quite selfish in how you handle your own life.
- You could find they’re not the real deal. One of the worst things about reaching out and trusting someone is that you could see that they’ve just been pretending to be your number-one supporter when all they really want to do is change you or waste your time. Ugh. This sucks, and the fear of being fooled by someone is what could hold you back from wanting to take that chance.
Why it’s so scary to rely on someone in love
- You don’t like having something to lose. When you’re flying solo through life, you only have yourself to depend on and you don’t really have anything to lose. But, when you let someone into your life and heart, the stakes are increased. If things don’t work out and they break your trust, you’ll lose out on something that felt good and that you realized you wanted. Of course, the reward of having the positive experience is worth it, but sometimes the fear feels strong enough to outweigh it.
- You fear becoming weak. This is something difficult for independent people to deal with: the fear that relying on someone in a relationship means that you’ve become weak because you’re so used to doing things your way and on your own terms. But having someone to share in your life and support you at times isn’t a weakness at all — it’s about growing with someone.
- You gotta face your fears. Opening your heart to someone will make you come face to face with your innermost fears. Maybe you’re terrified of being dumped or you’re afraid of commitment, or you’re scared that the person is going to disappoint you just like everyone else you’ve dated. Unpacking those fears is terrifying, but it’s also good because you can finally confront what you’re scared of and see that most of it is all in your head.
- You fear rejection. When you let your guard down with someone, you show them your flaws. You might be afraid of doing this out of some fear of rejection. When you’re closed up and strong within yourself, no one has to know about your secret fears, regrets, and what you consider to be your flaws. Now, they’re going to be on show for someone to see and you might worry that they’ll judge you for it.
- You time travel through previous hurts. There’s nothing like getting into a new relationship with someone and feeling a bit vulnerable to make your mind go back in time to previous relationships and how exes hurt you. It’s like your inner self is still trying to protect you by reminding you of how you were hurt so that you don’t let it happen again. But this is really a way of torturing yourself and making you miss out on opportunities to love and feel the love that you deserve. You’re strong and you know it, so you should know that you deal with whatever life throws you, even if it’s another bad breakup.
