When I was in my twenties, I found myself running away from love… and not just love, the love of women who wanted to choose me fully.
It made me anxious. It made my stomach sick.
I yearned for what I thought was freedom… not realizing I was imprisoned by the inability to receive and trust love that wanted to co-create a life with me.
But my ambivalence and avoidance weren’t flaws within me… they were actually brilliant strategies to avoid getting too close to people, because unconsciously loving someone meant likely getting betrayed by them. And even more deeply, loving someone meant I was likely to betray myself in the process.
So, as all brilliant adaptive strategies do, my strategy kept me in the loop of unavailability, which masqueraded as me being “ready” for deep love and partnership, yet running from whatever truly represented and embodied that.
I used common complaints like:
“There just isn’t anyone out there for me yet.”
“Dating in _______(insert city) is tough.”
“All the apps have are people like _____.”
“This person just isn’t my person… for whatever reason.” (And that was true at the time because I’m here now, writing this.)
It would be about fourteen years in the same pattern showing up as different relationships and dating circumstances before I would find myself on a video call with an unexpected angel who would say to me, “Mark, you know a lot about relationships. You have incredible insights… but I’m curious, have you ever actually let a woman love you?”
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