Love, Lust or Anxiety: How Our Limiting Beliefs Can Lead us Into Toxic Relationships
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How do you know when you've fallen in love or have feelings for someone?
Where in your body or your mind do you see it? Where do you feel it? If you could give it a color, a temperature, or a shape—what would it be?
It had been years since I thought about the subject until recently I was talking to someone in my sex coaching practice and they said, "I just haven't had that feeling that you get when you know."
I asked, "When you know what?" They responded, "When you know someone is 'the one.'"
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When I asked the questions above, this person's description of love went something like this: pressure in the solar plexus, a feeling of rushing thoughts about everything related to this person, and of course, the famous "butterflies" in the stomach.
Many years ago before I started guiding women on their journey of empowering themselves through pleasure, I too, thought of this as falling in love.
"I want to be crazy about someone," and phrases such as, "If they don't drive me nuts then they can't be the one."
The all too famous "si no me mueve el piso (If they don't make the floor shake)" mentality my mother had instilled in me during my teenage years.
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However, through the years with my own experience and training in emotional intelligence and intrapersonal dynamics, I've changed the beliefs I held so strongly about what romantic love should and shouldn't feel like.
It has led me to ask myself and my clients this question: is our definition of love in relation to the anxiety and fear you believe it causes?
For me, at this stage of my life, love means peace, safety, joy, freedom, and feeling at home with myself and with others. It means, giving, receiving, asking for what I'd like and need.
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It doesn't feel like anxiety, abandonment or nervousness. Don't get me wrong, I still get that tingly feeling of going into the unknown sometimes, but with the right partner, it has become a feeling of comfort, security, and pleasure. After all, relationships are built, but not on thorns.
When we attribute the label of love to infatuation and obsession, then love can feel like anxiety. I remember this all too well. Feeling like the air was knocked out of me any time my partner took too long to answer or didn't respond the way I thought they should, like I couldn't breathe without this person, and usually it was geared toward people that had shown me indifference, not interest or affection, regardless of our relationship status.
I felt "butterflies" for people who had treated me with disdain or didn't give me value. I realize that this happened because I hadn't identified love as a launchpad or a safe space, I had identified it as something I had to fight for to survive.
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Does love take work in relationships? Of course, but it's not a battlefield, as Pat Benatar would have us think. It's a place for growth, it's a place where you can be yourself and move forward, and best of all, grow. The best kind of relationships challenge our limiting beliefs, help us see our wounds and help us heal them with the right tools.
Next time you're wondering if what you're feeling is fear, love or anxiety, here are some questions you can ask yourself:
Does this feeling give me energy or take it away from me?
Why do I need to abide by a certain concept to fall in love?
What is my definition of romantic love?
When I think of my ideal partner, what attributes does that person have?
How would I like love to feel like? Have I ever experienced that kind of love before?
What are some of my limiting beliefs about love? Are they useful? Are they real? Are they kind?
Most of all, remember that all love, romantic and not, stems from the love we have for ourselves and how we nurture ourselves.
