Do You Feel Unloved By Those Who Say They Love You?

Here’s one possible reason why.

If the reason someone likes or loves you is in any way connected to them not knowing who you are or how you see the world, then I want to offer this hypothesis: no matter how much they claim to love you, you will never feel truly loved.

I spent the vast majority of my past relationships exposing only slivers of my core. I was extremely upfront when it came to my value systems and ethical beliefs, but I never fully revealed my vast range of dreams and aspirations. Maybe one ex aside, I didn’t trust sharing my precious secret worlds until I believed they could handle who I was. I tested them like ice on a recently frozen lake. Once my smaller reveals caused cracks, I deduced that they couldn’t take the rest of me and found a way to evoke an opt-out.

It was my first “real” boyfriend who taught me that pining after spilt milk did nothing to heal a broken heart. He was living proof that two people could be in the same experience yet have two completely different experiences. I was convinced he unabashedly loved who I was, youthful dreams in tow, even though I was only beginning to get to know my purest self. He didn’t. And that was when the holding back started.

The highest probability was always a lose-lose situation. Pretend to be less or other than who I was, and I might receive love but not deeply feel it, and soon that connection would be lost to the ‘underwhelm.’ OR, be all that I was, and the lake cracked open, we both fell in, and love drowned. And this wasn’t only applicable to romantic connections but also to family and friends. Not willing to risk any form of vulnerability, I defaulted to keeping a lot of me on mute.

Five years ago, however, my muted soul broke free with a triumphant SCREAM. An extreme unwillingness to further compromise any aspect of my BEING drowned out those sneaky fears of unlovability. Later that year, a man I fondly knew in passing for many years found his way into my heart.

I never felt externally loved to my core before my current relationship. Yet, I also never claimed all of who I was with anyone before him. From day one, I spoke my truth without fear. But it was because I’d finally learnt that in the perceived lose-lose, I had nothing to lose…