When the Love We Long For Feels Unsafe

On love, betrayal, and the parts of us that learned to protect ourselves.

Content Warning: This reflection explores childhood sexual abuse, betrayal, trauma, and the ways these experiences can affect our ability to trust and receive love. Please honour yourself and your own experiences as you read.

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I've been sitting with a realization about myself that has been incredibly painful to acknowledge.

I've spent so much of my life longing to be loved, cherished, and supported. Wanting someone to be there for me, to hold me, to love me, especially during the moments when I've needed them most.

And yet, when I look back over my life and my relationships, I can see how often I've pushed that very love away.

It's something I've done over and over again, often without even realizing it.

There's been this constant tug of war within me. A part that desperately wants to be loved and another part that wants people as far away from me as possible.

I want to be held, but I don't want anyone to see my weakness. I want support, but I don't want to appear needy. I want someone to be there for me, but allowing myself to need them feels incredibly vulnerable.

And I've been asking myself why.

Why do I push away the people I love, especially when I need them the most?

As I've been sitting with this and bringing it into prayer, I've begun to understand something about the parts of myself that learned, a very long time ago, that love wasn't always safe.

And I think this is something that deserves a much deeper conversation, especially for those of us who have experienced abuse, betrayal, or profound violations of trust.

When Love Becomes Confusing

For a child who experiences abuse at the hands of someone they love and trust, particularly a parent or family member, love can become incredibly confusing.

Because the person who is supposed to love you, protect you, and keep you safe is also the person who is hurting you.

And how does a child even begin to make sense of that?

How do you reconcile loving someone and fearing them at the same time? Wanting so badly to be loved by them while also wanting them far, far away from you?

Love can feel so good and so bad at the same time.

It can feel like acceptance and betrayal. Safety and danger. Connection and violation.

When those experiences happen during the years when we're learning what love, trust, and relationships are supposed to feel like, they can become deeply embedded in our subconscious beliefs and nervous system.

We learn that the people who are supposed to be trustworthy aren't always trustworthy. That the people who say they love us can also hurt us. That allowing ourselves to need someone can leave us vulnerable to betrayal.

And those beliefs don't simply disappear because we grow up.

We carry them into our adult relationships, often without realizing just how much they're influencing the way we love, trust, and allow ourselves to be loved.

The Parts of Us That Learned to Protect Ourselves

I think one of the most important things to understand is that these patterns often develop as protective mechanisms.

There is a part of us that learned, through experience, that being vulnerable with another person wasn't safe.

And that part has been trying to protect us ever since.

It keeps people at a distance. It becomes fiercely independent. It struggles to ask for help or receive support. It looks for evidence that people cannot be trusted because that is what it has learned to believe.

Even when someone genuinely loves us, that protective part can become activated because closeness means vulnerability, and vulnerability has become associated with danger.

And the really painful part is that we can spend our entire lives praying to be loved, cherished, and supported, only to find ourselves resisting those very things when they finally arrive.

We want nothing more than to receive love, yet some part of us doesn't know how.

It doesn't know how to be in a relationship with someone who is trustworthy because its earliest experiences taught it that people who were supposed to be trustworthy weren't.

For some, these experiences can contribute to what is known as disorganized attachment, where the longing for connection exists alongside an equally powerful fear of it. You don't know whether to move closer or pull away, whether to trust or protect yourself, whether to open your heart or keep it guarded.

And so we find ourselves repeating familiar patterns, often across years of relationships, without fully understanding why.

There can be a great deal of grief in recognizing this, especially when we see how much we've wanted something different.

But I think we need to be careful about turning that recognition into another reason to judge or blame ourselves.

There was a time when the parts of us that learned to push love away were doing the very best they could to keep us safe.

When Protection Becomes Isolation

One of the most painful realizations is recognizing that the walls we've built to protect ourselves are also keeping us separate from the people we love.

We can become so accustomed to anticipating betrayal that we struggle to recognize when genuine love is standing right in front of us.

We question people's intentions. We anticipate disappointment. We become uncomfortable when someone wants to care for us, particularly during the moments when we feel most vulnerable.

And until we become conscious of what's happening beneath the surface, we can spend years believing that the problem is always somewhere outside of us.

That people can't be trusted. That no one is ever really there for us. That we're destined to be disappointed or abandoned.

Of course, there are people who genuinely aren't trustworthy. There are relationships that are unsafe, and experiences of betrayal that have nothing to do with our subconscious patterns.

Discernment is important.

But there is also an invitation here to become curious about the parts of ourselves that have learned to expect betrayal, even when there is no evidence that it is happening.

To recognize when we're responding to the person standing in front of us and when we're responding to an experience from long ago.

Because awareness gives us the opportunity to make a different choice.

Learning to Receive Love

I don't know that there is a simple solution to something that has been so deeply ingrained in our understanding of love and relationships.

Especially when those beliefs were formed through experiences that were profoundly confusing, disorienting, and painful.

But I think healing begins, in part, with developing a different relationship with the parts of ourselves that are still afraid.

Instead of fighting against those protective mechanisms or trying to force ourselves to trust, we can begin to understand what they're afraid of and what they need to feel safe.

We can learn to recognize the difference between genuine danger and an old wound that has been activated. To establish boundaries that honour our needs while allowing trust to develop through consistency, honesty, and respect.

For many people, trauma-informed professional support can be an important part of that process.

And I also believe there is a spiritual dimension to this healing.

A willingness to bring these deeply guarded parts of ourselves into the presence of God, Spirit, and unconditional love.

To ask for guidance in softening the walls around our hearts and healing the parts of us that don't yet believe they can trust the love of others.

To remember that being vulnerable doesn't make us weak, that needing love and support is part of being human, and that we were never meant to carry everything alone.

And this is where I find myself now.

I don't have all the answers about how to heal something that has been so deeply ingrained in me. I'm still coming to understand it myself.

But I do know that I don't want to keep pushing away the very love I've spent so much of my life praying for.

I want to learn how to receive it. To allow myself to be vulnerable without feeling weak. To trust without abandoning my own discernment. To let myself be held and supported without feeling that I have to protect myself from the very people who love me.

I want to experience relationships where love doesn't require me to abandon myself, where my boundaries are respected, and where I can allow myself to be fully seen.

And I want the parts of me that have been standing guard for so long to know that they don't have to do it all alone anymore.

There is a difference between protecting ourselves from harm and protecting ourselves from love.

I wonder how many of us have spent years doing both without realizing it.

How many of us have mistaken our survival mechanisms for who we are?

I think part of coming home to ourselves is learning to recognize these parts with compassion, honouring what they helped us survive, and allowing ourselves to discover who we are when they no longer have to lead.

Because underneath the fear, the guardedness, and the walls we've built, there is still a part of us that longs to love and be loved.

A part that wants to trust. To soften. To receive.

And perhaps that part has been waiting a very long time for us to let her.

As I've been sitting with all of this, I've been bringing these parts of myself into prayer, asking God and Spirit to help me heal what I haven't been able to fully understand or change on my own.

I want to share that prayer here because I know I'm not the only one who has struggled with this. And if any part of what I've shared resonates with you, I invite you to take these words into your own heart, change them however you need to, and allow them to become your own.

A Prayer for the Parts of Us That Are Afraid to Receive Love

Holy Mother, Holy Father God, Christ Sophia, my angels, guides, guardians, ancestors, spirit family, and all those who love me unconditionally and serve the Light only.

I ask for divine intervention and support in healing the parts of myself that don't believe they can trust the love of others.

The parts that are resistant to receiving love, support, tenderness, and care.

The parts that have learned to protect themselves by pushing others away, by remaining guarded, by keeping themselves separate and isolated.

I ask that you help these parts of my heart to soften and open to receive love. To receive support. To trust. To allow more joy, more peace, more love, and more abundance into my life and into my heart.

I ask that you soften the guarded walls around these parts of me and help them know that they are protected, and that they don't have to carry the responsibility of protecting themselves all alone.

Help me recognize the difference between genuine danger and the fears I've carried from the past.

Help me believe that I am lovable. That I am worthy of good things. That I am worthy of love, joy, abundance, creativity, happiness, health, and vitality.

Help me open my heart to the love that is available to me, while honouring my own boundaries, truth, and discernment.

And help the parts of me that have spent so long protecting themselves finally begin to experience what it feels like to be safe, supported, cherished, and loved.

Amen.