Your Love Is Scaring Me Into Abandoning Myself-- and You



Want to scare an addict to death? Offer them true, unconditional love. Every addictive person longs to be loved, and yet everyone of us is terrified of real love. We didn't experience it as children, and so when we meet someone who offers authentic love to us, we're terrified. We don't have the ability to believe or trust that it's authentic.

This reality is captured wonderfully in a new song by The Neighbourhood called Scary Love: "Don't wanna be alone, (but) you're too pretty for me. Baby, I know it's true, yeah... Your love is scaring me. No one has ever cared for me as much as you do."

Before Recovery, whenever someone offered me the real love that I so desperately wanted, I was terrified and subconsciously found ways to push the person away. I always managed to force them to abandon me because I was too broken inside to believe or trust that anyone could actually love me. After all, I DIDN'T love me, so why would anyone else love me?

That was the great paradox of my early years of life as a young adult: I loathed myself and didn't think I was worth loving. Yet, I TOTALLY thought that there had to be someone out there who could love me enough into teaching me to love myself. Every time I met "that" person, however, all of my insecurities about my beliefs-- that I was unlovable-- got in the way. These negative old, entrenched beliefs forced me to betray the love I was being freely offered. I always found a way to drive the other person away. Then I wailed in my own self-pity, blaming them and reassuring myself that they had abandoned me because I was right from the start: I was too unlovable.

Now, thanks to Recovery, I do love myself better and I've been able to offer authentic love to others. And in doing so, I've had the same experience. It's just the roles that have changed. Now, I'm the one offering the love. I'm the one being told "no one has ever cared for me as much as you do." And I'm the one who's being pushed away.

Over this past year, in particular, another person has pushed me away by using the same sort of fear of abandonment that I used to engage in to push people away. The experience is exactly the same as in my pre-recovery days. It's just that this time, I'm the one who has been pushed away. I'm the one whose real love hasn't been trusted and I'm the one who is now standing off in the distance, alienated from a friend I really love; a friend who just can't accept the fact that he is a really lovable person. This friend is still entrenched in believing that he is too unlovable and my love and friendship have scared him away.

It makes me sad. But I also know that I can't rescue him and I can't force him to believe that he is a lovable person. No amount of love that I, or anyone else, offers him is going to be enough for him to trust in it's authenticity until he first learns to love himself. 

And the same is true for every addict. No one can love us into loving ourselves. We won't allow it. The false belief that we are unlovable will always be the stumbling block. In Recovery, it's important that we first learn to value and love ourselves. There can be no successful change, no redemption from addictive behaviors, without self-love. Self-love is the essential ingredient for a healthy lifestyle.

If you struggle with self-love, admit to your Higher Power that you are powerless over your inability to love yourself, and ask for the gift of self-love. Then trust your Higher Power to help you love yourself better, as you do the work of treating yourself better through healthy self-care.

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