When You Finally Fall For Someone Who Knows How To Love
When we practice loving someone who isn't scared of love, they don't let us run. They don't let us completely shut down. They don't let us function out of fear. They stay.
By Leena Lomeli
It seems as if the moment we start to search and discover ourselves is also the moment in which we lose ourselves again.
Coming from a broken home with childhood role models who never once spoke of love, it’s safe to assure you I am clueless on what it means to grow softly with another human. People who are not taught the importance of kind and gentle love, and are not shown the importance of worthiness and being vulnerable with another, do not seek the type of love that massages your back at night and shows you how kind the world can be.
People who have domestic violence embedded into their memory, people who do not understand how a man is supposed to love a woman when she can’t even love herself—those people never seek graceful love with another.
So what happens when someone shows up with beautiful intentions to love you whole-heartedly and they just so happen to know exactly how?
We plan on being alone and working through our disfigurement. People like us are okay with being alone because we know just how safe that is. People like us don’t like the feeling of unworthiness that comes from being with someone who is emotionally advanced and knows exactly how to adore us.
People like us do want love, we want to be taken care of and we want to love so badly in return. When this person comes along we will probably take baby steps; there will be moments of convincing ourselves to dive in and moments of wanting to walk away. We’ll pretend we are not falling in love with them as much as we actually are. One day we will probably spend crying in the shower because we will understand how terrified we are of what is right in front of us.
We are constantly in circumstances where this person is wanting to take care of us or buy us things; they know how to communicate and all we know how to do is listen. We push, but we don’t push fully because subconsciously, we know exactly what it’s like to push as hard as we can until we are walked away from. We observe their actions, and become completely infatuated with their ability to spill raw pain out of their lips and we witness complete disarray out of their eyes.
Maybe that’s the moment we know we are in love. It’s seeing something in someone else that you want for yourself, that’s the real moment of adoration and attachment for us.
The day will come when we know we have experienced this feeling of not being capable for too long. We will try to overcome this nightmare inside of us and finally we will tell them about our fear in love.
What I’ve learned is that when we practice loving someone who isn’t scared of love, they don’t let us run. They don’t let us completely shut down. They don’t let us function out of fear. They stay.
This relationship that we’ve gotten to experience such a growth spurt in is a gift within itself. Maybe this is our forever relationship; maybe it’s one we’ll remember just because it was the beginning of finding our freedom in love rather than suffocation. We just tasted what it’s like to speak allowed our desire, our need, and our true feelings. We just exposed ourselves to the world, to someone who wanted to see us.
All I can say is after you let someone love you who knows how to love, continue to practice loving, this person or the next. Love them each moment more gently, more acceptingly, believing you’re more worthy, and believing they’re worthy too.
Acknowledge each thing you overcome and each discussion that taught you more and more about yourself. Letting someone love you is a journey within itself. This journey of being loved by someone who knows how to love is merely the recognition of our healing and the birthplace of joy.