You’re scared of being hurt, rejected, confused, or not being available when Chris Hemsworth rolls into town, and yet deep down you want a relationship.
It’s common to fear falling in love, especially with dating terms like haunting, ghosting, and zombieing being bandied about the internet willy-nilly. Makes dating sound like a horror movie.
If you’re determined to explore love and relationships, you need to get to the bottom of your fear of love.
Key Takeaways
- Fear of relationships is common, particularly after past experiences of hurt or disappointment.
- Identifying the roots of your fear (rejection, loss of independence, etc.) is crucial for overcoming it.
- Self-love and practicing vulnerability in small ways will build the foundation for deeper connections.
- Realistic expectations and open communication are key to healthy, lasting relationships.
1. Your Past Experiences Hurt You
If you have been hurt by a significant other, especially in a toxic relationship, you’re always going to be wary of it happening again, always afraid of getting hurt again.
It feels like you may never trust anyone with your heart again. Feelings of anger, jealousy, hatred, humiliation, and powerlessness are exhausting, and they’re hard to shake.
According to the book Interpersonal Rejection, “Betrayal is devastating because it disrupts an ongoing, meaningful relationship in which partners have invested material and emotional resources.”[1] Therefore, you avoid situations that you fear could produce the same result.
It’s important to learn from these past experiences instead of letting them control you. Take back your power. According to Dray Salcido of the Healthy Human Project, we need to know why we are afraid before we can deal with our fear. She says, “Owning our fear and seeking to understand it gives us back our power.”[2]
So look back on the bad experiences and use them. Think about your good experiences as well as your bad ones. Write it down, even. What worked, and what didn’t? Identify the red flags you may not have noticed at the beginning.
You can use all of this to grow and shape your future.
There is no remedy for love but to love more. – Henry David Thoreau
2. You Struggle With Low Self-Esteem
Comparing yourself to others, feeling insecure, constantly worrying, and nursing negative thoughts about yourself are all signs of low confidence. If you have strong feelings of dislike toward yourself, you might find it hard to believe that anyone else could love you.
But you should be kind to yourself. Treat yourself to one thing that fills your soul every day, be that a nice bubble bath, a bar of chocolate, a glass of wine, or lunch with a friend.
Exercise is also a great way to make yourself feel good. A two-year study published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology showed a correlation between increased physical activity and improvements in how the participants felt about themselves.
Author of the study Steriani Elavsky notes that “middle-aged women can enhance how they perceive their condition and body attractiveness by continued participation in physical activity.”[3]
You can build your confidence higher by setting goals and achieving them.
I’m not talking about climbing Everest here. Small challenges work too.
Join a new class, a book club, or a walking group. It may be a little scary at first, but you’ll be proud of yourself for doing it.
Your comfort zone is comfortable, yes, but that doesn’t mean you should live there. My sofa is comfortable but if I stayed on it forever I’d fuse to the cushions.
“You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” – Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your Life
Therapy can also help you learn to love who you are. A study at the Research Clinic for Holistic Medicine in Copenhagen found that over half of participants improved their self-esteem after 20 sessions of therapy.[4]
Therapy can be intimidating, but it’s like going to the gynecologist — they’ve seen it all a million times, they’re professionals, and they won’t be shocked.
3. You Fear Losing Your Independence
Maybe your fear isn’t that deep — you like your me time and you don’t want someone blundering along and disrupting it. After all, spending time with people can be draining, especially for introverts.
Then again, it might go a little deeper than this.
Women who were raised by controlling and overbearing parents are more likely to be self-reliant and perhaps even afraid to lose that hard-won independence to a relationship, according to the experts at Psychology Today.[5]
Independence might be especially significant to you if you’re a woman with a good career and financial freedom. Starting a family is lovely, if that’s what you want, but the thought of giving your career up, or losing it involuntarily, is terrifying.
No one wants to go back to the days of traditional heterosexual relationships where the man worked and the woman was dependent on him. She couldn’t even have a credit card in her name.
It’s not the 1950s anymore. Your relationship can be different. You can bury yourself in credit card debt if you want to. (Please don’t.)
Keeping your alone time and your financial freedom is important, and doable. You need to know your boundaries, set them, and make sure that you choose a person who respects them. Walk your own path, speak your own mind, and make sure that you do at least some socializing without your partner.
You can have your me time, your friends, and your date nights, as well as your career and your bank account, and your partner can have theirs too.
Life is all about balance, and so are healthy relationships.
4. You Worry About Repeating Unhealthy Patterns
Parents can really F you up. If you were raised around toxic, abusive, or otherwise dysfunctional relationships, you may be afraid of repeating the unhealthy patterns that were so normal to you growing up. But you can break these cycles if you are aware of them and conscious of your own behavior.
Communication is important. Talk about your experiences, how you feel, what you want from life, from your partner and your relationship. It’s completely normal to set reasonable expectations from your partner. A person who won’t respect your clear and healthy boundaries is not the person for you.
Don’t be afraid to argue. Arguments don’t have to – and shouldn’t – involve screaming and name-calling (somebody please tell my ex). They should be constructive, not destructive.
Once you have respect for yourself and others, you can have respectful and constructive disagreements. Mindfulness and therapy can help if you struggle with conflict.
5. You Have Unresolved Trust Issues
A lack of trust makes relationships particularly difficult. If you find it hard to trust others, the mere idea of a relationship can seem extra scary.
Possible causes for trust issues can include trauma, rejection in your childhood, and experiences from your past relationships.
People who were raised in toxic families will find it more difficult to trust others, and people who were repeatedly abused sexually in their childhood will find trusting others particularly hard.
According to an article published in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, this devastating betrayal, understandably, messes with one’s ability to figure out who can be trusted.[6]
Your past experiences may have shown you that people, in general, are untrustworthy. Someone in your past smashed your rose-tinted glasses and now you look at others with suspicious eyes.
Learning to trust again is difficult. And it’s even harder to do it on your own, as Dr. Judith L. Herman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, explains in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
She says, “Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.” You need to develop emotional connections with others to rebuild and repair your feelings of trust.[7]
There are ways to build trust in relationships, though, if you have decided to trust again. You need to be open and honest and expect (and get) the same in return. It’s essential that both parties openly discuss their feelings and expectations.
You can’t learn to trust a person if you expect them to let you down. If you often find yourself waiting for the other shoe to drop, it might be worth exploring therapy to help you resolve the lingering emotional trauma.
6. You Have a Fear of Commitment
It’s been said that women who maintain their own surname after marriage do so because they’re afraid of commitment. Now, you and I know this assumption is nonsense. What’s not nonsense is the notion that women can fear commitment as much as men.
If you’re determined to work through your fear of commitment and get into a relationship, maybe even fall in love, acknowledge how afraid you are and try to pin down the reason. If you don’t work through your fear, you risk pushing away people that you care about.
After all, a fear of commitment is truly a fear of intimacy. Every new relationship requires a modicum of vulnerability, and since you don’t want to be vulnerable, you avoid relationships altogether.
I would say try not to think about the future, but that’s silly. Everyone thinks about what their future might look like. You should try not to worry about the future though. Instead, just enjoy the present. If you decide to commit to a relationship, look to the future with hope instead of trepidation.
“The greatest things in life all require commitment, sacrifice, some struggle and hardship. It’s not easy. But absolutely worth it.” – Robin S. Sharma
7. You Have Unrealistic Expectations
Watching The Lord of the Rings too many times may have caused you to hold your prospective partners to a high standard, but you need to remember that Aragorn is a fictional character and you will probably find it difficult to meet someone like that in real life.
Let me make one thing clear: Women should have high standards. You deserve to be treated like the queen you are.
But you must avoid impossible standards.
While it is good to want a high-value man, you can’t expect perfection. If you expect your partner to be perfect, and they aren’t, because that’s not a thing, your relationship will eventually descend into resentment and bitterness — on both sides.
Nobody can look good all the time, always be the perfect host, never be ill, or always want to have sex when you want to. We are only human, after all, and we should be loved for who we are.
To develop a healthy relationship you should keep your expectations realistic. That way, you won’t be disappointed and your partner won’t be under any pressure to be something they aren’t — like heir to the throne of Gondor.
8. You’re Not Ready for a Relationship
More and more women are choosing the single life. According to a report from Wells Fargo, 52% of women were single as of 2021. In fact, “with women pushing back marriage or forgoing it altogether, the number of never married women has grown 20% over the past decade.”[8]
Women don’t have to marry any more for fear of being left destitute, now that we are “allowed” to have personal bank accounts and own land, thank you very much.
If you’re not ready to start a relationship, don’t force yourself. You should be in the right place in your life before you invite another person to share that life with you. If you’re not ready, you’ll get scared, or worse, get hurt.
You can dip your toes in, go on a few dates, have some fun, if you like. But focus on yourself, for the most part. Concentrate on your career, work toward your goals. Travel the world, visit Machu Picchu, see the northern lights with your friends.
When you’re ready to settle down, you’ll know.
9. You’re Afraid of Vulnerability
It’s hard to open up when you are afraid to be vulnerable. Putting your heart on the line takes inner strength and confidence, which can be hard to come by.
An article from Cyprus Turkish Journal of Psychiatry & Psychology explains, “In relationships, vulnerability is when an individual lets another person see their inner world.”[9]
Once you open up to someone, they will open up to you, if they haven’t done so already. This will make you feel more connected to each other and help you build trust, intimacy, and a meaningful bond.
The more you know a person, the more you can grow with them. Being your honest and authentic self is extremely important in the development and maintenance of a relationship, and engaging in intimate conversations can bring you closer together.
To be vulnerable with others, you first need to know yourself and be aware of your own emotions. Therapy and/or journaling can help you take control of your thought patterns and insecurity, if necessary.
Talk about your feelings with others by telling them what you’re afraid of, what makes you angry, or even what makes you happy. You can do this in baby steps, but you have to start somewhere.
10. You’ve Witnessed Difficult Relationships
With the divorce rate what it is, we’ve all witnessed some dismal, doomed relationships. Watching from the outside while a couple deteriorates is not fun. They’re unhappy, they resent one another, and they both feel trapped, and yet they hold on and hold on until they’re both broken (and in many cases — broke).
This could instill a fear of love in anyone.
But these bad relationships are not signs to you from the universe, they’re simply people who shouldn’t be together but won’t let go. Your relationships don’t need to be the same as the ones around you. Learn from the failing relationships you have seen. You can learn and grow by observing other people’s mistakes, as well as your own.
When love comes around for you — and it will — you’ll be better off for watching these difficult relationships, not worse.
11. You’re Unsure of What You Want
If you’re not sure what you’re looking for in a partner, but you definitely want to find love, why not just have fun during the search? Date date date, and then date some more. You’ve gotta kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.
It’s normal to be unsure when you’re searching for someone to spend your life with.
Start by exploring your own values. Not only your values in a relationship, but your life values. What’s important to you? By knowing yourself, you can know what you want in a partner.
You might want to be wined and dined or backpack around the world. Maybe you want someone who will be a stay-at-home parent, or someone who is sensible and financially stable.
Writing a list may seem terribly unromantic, but it’s a good way to get your thoughts in order. Things like whether or not you want to have a family, and if so, how many children you would like. You might want dogs in your life — of course — so someone who hates animals won’t be ideal for you. If you have a preference for country or city living, write that down too.
But don’t forget that opposites attract. You may collect this list of things you want in your prince but then a frog comes and lights a fire within you. Just go with it!
12. You Fear Losing Yourself in a Relationship
You might fear that your new relationship will swallow you whole, that you will lose your sense of self if you become part of a couple (or throuple, whatever you’re into) but there are ways to make sure that doesn’t happen. When you know who you are and what you want from life, and feel secure in your morals and values, this sense of identity isn’t going to be easily lost.
Embrace your hobbies and other things in your life that you’re passionate about, and don’t let them go by the wayside when you enter a relationship. Have this discussion as soon as you level up a relationship so you can manage your partner’s expectations.
You may find someone who shares your interests, and you two can have a world of adventure together. But we all know that opposites sometimes attract, so you could fall in love with someone who has completely different pastimes, which you should both keep pursuing separately.
13. You Fear Rejection
Being pushed away is a dreadful feeling. If you’ve ever experienced rejection, it’s totally understandable that you’d want to avoid it. Once bitten, twice shy.
This fear, however, makes it difficult to have deep connections with people.
According to an article in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, sharing how we feel could go either way. Authors Joel et al. say, “For example, sharing an intimate thought with a friend carries the potential for both connection (if the friend responds with validation) and rejection (if the friend responds with disapproval).”[10]
If we aren’t sure our feelings will be validated, if we are afraid of rejection, we will probably not share them at all.
The fear of rejection will be ever-present as long as you feel that you are not worth loving. This can be overcome if you work to grow your sense of self-worth, with therapy and building your self-confidence.
You should challenge negative thoughts. If you think someone will reject you, think about whether that fear is based on what you know about that person, or past experiences. You might think you should trust your gut, but an anxiety disorder can make our guts lie to us.
You should also come to terms with the fact that being rejected is not the end of the world. Just think of what you have to gain if you aren’t rejected. It might just be the beginning of a beautiful love story.
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” – Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
14. You Have an Anxiety Disorder
About 16% of American adults have anxiety of some type and degree.[11] Generalized anxiety disorder, which manifests as constant worry, can mean you’re also scared of many types of relationships, including romantic ones.
Anxiety might cause you to be scared to get into a committed relationship for many reasons, including the development of an unhealthy attachment style. Stress and anxiety can cause us to cocoon ourselves in a protective layer within our comfort zones. When we control everything around us, we shut people out. We don’t get hurt. There’s no one to worry about.
But when there’s no one to worry about, there’s no one to love. And I don’t doubt that you have a lot of love to give. Yes, you want to be alone, but finding someone you love can be so much better than control.
Mental health professionals, such as those who practice cognitive behavioral therapy, can help you get control of your mental health issues. You don’t have to let anxiety and depression stop you from trying to find love.
Conclusion
If you fall off your bicycle and scrape your knee, you don’t give up cycling. You’d miss the wind in your hair, the world rolling by, the seat up your butt . . . You can just wear kneepads in future.
It’s the same with relationships.
If you’re afraid of love, explore ways to prevent that hurt from happening. Wear the kneepads of love, if you will. You might fall off the bike again, but your knees will be safe next time.
“There is no intimacy without vulnerability.” – Brené Brown, Daring Greatly.
Looking to explore more topics about starting a relationship? Check our page here.
FAQs
Why do I feel so scared to be in a relationship?
You feel so scared to be in a relationship either because you can’t trust anyone, you fear heartbreak and rejection, or you value your independence. Exploring the reasons why you’re afraid of love and intimacy can help you move forward into a real relationship.
Can you have a successful relationship if you’re afraid of love?
Yes, you can have a successful relationship if you’re afraid of love, but it’s going to take some work. Both parties need to be open about how they feel and get vulnerable with one another. You need a partner who will be supportive and understanding of your needs and your fears.
How do I know if my fear of relationships is holding me back?
You know if your fear of relationships is holding you back when you feel stuck in a cycle of relationships that go wrong or you sabotage the relationship and push him away. Practicing self-awareness may give you a chance to break this cycle.
References
1. Fitness, J. (2001). Betrayal, rejection, revenge, and forgiveness:
An interpersonal script approach. In Leary, M. (Ed.) Interpersonal rejection (pp. 73–103). Oxford University Press.
http://www.psych.purdue.edu/~willia55/392F-%2706/FitnessBetrayal.pdf
2. Salcido, D. (2020, January 11). Afraid to connect. Healthy Human Project.
https://www.healthyhumansproject.com/category/love-me/page/9/
3. Elavsky, S. (2010). Longitudinal examination of the exercise and self-esteem model in middle-aged women. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 32(6), 862–880.
https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.32.6.862
4. Ventegodt, S., Thegler, S., Andreasen, T., Struve, F. ,Enevoldsen, L., Bassaine, L., Torp, M., & Merrick, J. (2006). Self-reported low self-esteem: Intervention and follow-up in a clinical setting. The Scientific World Journal, 7, 299–305.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2007.88
5. Zarrabi, R. (2023). How the fear of losing independence impacts relationships. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/mindful-dating/202303/how-the-fear-of-losing-independence-impacts-relationships
6. Gobin, R. L., & Freyd, J. J. (2014). The impact of betrayal trauma on the tendency to trust. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 6(5), 505.
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=e175c7f6e89c691f6b2c9b05ad92a2ecb5fd99a2
7. Herman, J. L. (1998). Recovery from psychological trauma. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 52(S1), S98-S103.
https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-1819.1998.0520s5S145.x
8. House, S., Seery, S., Cervi, N., & Kohl, J. (2023, March 8). Party of one:
How single women stack up in the U.S. economy. Wells Fargo.
https://externalcontent.blob.core.windows.net/pdfs/7a16f5a8-b531-403c-bb1e-ed14d5cbd8b2.pdf
9. Bakshi, A., & Ansari, S. A. (2022). The key role of vulnerability in developing authentic connections in romantic relationships. Kıbrıs Türk Psikiyatri ve Psikoloji Dergisi, 4(1), 103–109.
https://doi.org/10.35365/ctjpp.22.1.11
10. Joel, S., Plaks, J. E., & MacDonald, G. (2019). Nothing ventured, nothing gained: People anticipate more regret from missed romantic opportunities than from rejection. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(1), 305–336.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407517729567
11. Terlizzi, E. P., & Villarroel, M. A. (2020). Symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder among adults: United States, 2019. NCHS Data Brief No. 378.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db378.htm
