{"id":4846,"date":"2014-07-31T20:57:28","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T02:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=4846"},"modified":"2014-07-31T20:57:41","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T02:57:41","slug":"to-love-or-not-to-love-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/to-love-or-not-to-love-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"To Love or Not to Love, That is the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Loving someone can be scary.\u00a0 Scary because if you don\u2019t love at all then in theory you will never get hurt.\u00a0 How can you be hurt if you didn\u2019t care to begin with?\u00a0 And so some people take on the mindset that they are better off alone then to put their heart out there and risk having it broken.\u00a0 I actually remember feeling that way myself, once upon a time.\u00a0 After going through a divorce at a fairly young age I remember that it took a really long time to get over the feelings of hurt that accompanied a divorce.\u00a0 Then one day when I finally felt like I had reached the point of being over the hurt I felt a huge hesitation to ever put myself into a situation where anyone would matter to me enough that they could hurt me that deeply again.\u00a0 Not that it was fun to be alone, but at least being alone I knew what to expect and I knew I could cope with those feelings.\u00a0 But if I were to venture my heart back out there again then I would be putting it in another situation where it could be hurt and the thought of taking the risk of being hurt again was far worse than the thought of just staying on my own.\u00a0 And that was genuinely how I felt for many years.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I was so set on not needing anyone that I even recall pushing back when one guy I dated tried to help me carry in some groceries from my car.\u00a0 I almost panicked when he started carrying them in for me and I told him thanks but I would handle it myself.\u00a0 There was a part of me that was so afraid that if I let him help me then I would start relying on him and needing him and I did NOT want to let that happen.\u00a0 I was just fine all on my own, thank you. \u00a0And I was petrified to let anyone make me feel not fine on my own, so I became super independent at taking care of things myself.<\/p>\n

It took a really long time and the help of a great counselor (which by the way I highly recommend to everyone out there\u2026a good counselor can change your life for the better in so many ways, so never hesitate to go to one if you want to improve yourself\u2026it is awesome!) for me to finally get to the point where I realized that in order for me to fall in love and have a good relationship I was going to have to be willing to be vulnerable again.\u00a0 I was going to have to open my heart up.\u00a0 And either someone would squash it to bits again, or someone could love me unconditionally and there was no telling which would happen. \u00a0\u00a0But by not taking the risk I was guaranteeing a life alone, and at least by taking the risk there would be the chance of something amazing.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket \u2014 safe, dark, motionless, airless \u2014 it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.\u201d\u00a0<\/span> -CS Lewis<\/p>\n

No doubt it is scary to love someone with your entire soul because by you loving them that much they can most definitely break your heart into a million pieces.\u00a0 But you have to remember that in the end if they do break your heart it doesn\u2019t diminish who you are, not one bit.\u00a0 You will still be amazing, even if they hurt you. Is it fun to get hurt? No.\u00a0 But is it fun to never open yourself up to loving someone? Nope.\u00a0 And so we must take the risk.\u00a0 All I can advise is that you go into it with the best of intentions and love the best you can.\u00a0 Then if they hurt you at least you can walk away knowing you did your best and that you are still someone you can be proud of being.<\/p>\n

No matter how you have been hurt in the past, never give up on finding love.\u00a0 It\u2019s never going to be easy, in fact the strongest relationships are typically the ones who have weathered the worst storms and made it through.\u00a0 But in the end if you are lucky you will get to be with someone who loves you as much as you love them, even when you are both 90 and your hair is falling out and your teeth already have, and you still look at each other and think the other is the most beautiful person in the world.\u00a0 Here\u2019s hoping that for all of us!<\/p>\n

~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loving someone can be scary.\u00a0 Scary because if you don\u2019t love at all then in theory you will never get hurt.\u00a0 How can you be hurt if you didn\u2019t care to begin with?\u00a0 And so some people take on the mindset that they are better off alone then to put their heart out there and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1375,174,4657,4436,1503,4665,91,4666,1504,4671,1499,4663,93,4672,451,4661,103,4669,4660,4670,4664,35,4662,11,284,1548,1231,2483,4658,215,2584,4667,2558,4659,84,4668,4656,125],"class_list":["post-4846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afraid","tag-anxiety","tag-break-up","tag-broken","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-casket","tag-change","tag-coffin","tag-cs-lewis","tag-diminsh","tag-divorce","tag-entanglements","tag-fear","tag-grow-old-with-me","tag-heart","tag-hobbies","tag-hurt","tag-impenetrable","tag-intact","tag-irredeemable","tag-lock","tag-love","tag-luxuries","tag-marriage","tag-men","tag-open","tag-protect","tag-risk","tag-risk-taking","tag-scary","tag-selfish","tag-selfishness","tag-soul","tag-to-love","tag-trust","tag-unbreakable","tag-vulnerable","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4848,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4846\/revisions\/4848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}