Do I Dare Love Again?

This week, we continue our series with Fawn, who dives into the scars that love can leave and how we can avoid shutting love out.

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The subject for today’s post resulted from a common theme that emerged this past week with different clients, women in my workshops, Break Through Into Love consultations, and Facebook status updates. The theme had to do with our willingness to open our hearts again to love after having suffered a devastating loss.

The first time we touch a hot stove we learn quickly not to ever do that again. So it is with love. When we give ourselves to someone, and they abuse our trust, disrespect us, abandon us, or cheat on us, we are left reeling in pain and confusion. The last thing we want to do is go back into that cauldron of heartache. Yet, we DO want to go back. We long to love and to be loved. We are born to love!

A client shared with me last week how difficult it is to emotionally let go of her former “lover” who cheated on her and abandoned her. How on earth can she open her heart again to a new love?

Fortunately, she is embracing our work together, healing her broken heart, learning to love herself and to honor her own values. Her light is beginning to shine again in a way that others are taking notice. She’s more in tune with her own intuition than she was when she first met her former “lover”. It’s unlikely she would ever make the same mistakes again. Still…the hesitation. Do I dare love again? What if he hurts me? I don’t think I can take that.

Love is a risk. There’s no other way to say it. We can’t create a deep and passionate long-term loving relationship without becoming vulnerable to our lover. Every time my husband Steve or I retreat into our own self-protection, we exclude and hurt each other. But we’re committed to each other and to our marriage. So we come back together and apologize and reaffirm our love for each other. And our relationship grows deeper each day.

I shared with my client what C.S. Lewis said so profoundly:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly 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 - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable…The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe from all dangers of love is hell."

I’m always so moved by this statement by C.S. Lewis. Right after I got off the phone with my client, the message came charging at me again. This time in the FaceBook post of my friend.

“This morning, while working with my voice coach, we were singing The Rose. When it came to the verse that says ‘Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed.’ I realized I have unconsciously held the belief that love hurts, so don’t let it in again. When we’ve been hurt by someone we loved, it’s easy to put up the armor and vow never to let that happen again. Except, when you lock up your heart, you not only disallow outside love to come in, but also, self-love… the most important love of all. Now that I have brought this belief to consciousness, I bless it. I see how it has served to protect me, and now I choose to let it go and let love in again.”

So, I guess the Universe is speaking to us about releasing our armor and taking the risk of loving again. But we should not do it blindly. Only after we have learned the lessons from our broken heart should we bring our wiser whole self back into the arena of love.

Wishing you courage and faith as you open your heart to love.

Fawn

Read Part 3, "How to Put an End to the Valentine's Day Myth"

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Happy clients around the world call Fawn “Their relationship guru.”  For single professional women serious about creating an amazing life-long passionate love-affair, Fawn is their go-to expert to discover and claim their feminine power and attract great men who are ready to love, respect, and cherish them. Clients learn to radiate their unique confidence, love, and beauty in a powerful way that makes them irresistible to the men who are the perfect match for them. With confidence and joy — and with her inspired guidance and support — they learn to repel the men who only want to use them, and magnetize and inspire real, quality men into their lives to create real and lasting love for a lifetime.

Fawn spent most of her twenties and thirties with a series of dead-end relationships and broken hearts. When she was almost forty, after one last devastating heart-break, she decided she needed to start taking responsibility for her relationships with men and the pain she was creating. (Either that or become …a nun!) She began working with a coach who ever so gently asked her the questions that opened her eyes and her heart. Within a year, at the age of 40, she married the love of her life and they’re still going strong.

After years of informal coaching and transformational work, Fawn graduated from the prestigious Coaches Training Institute as a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach.

She is passionate about women finding real passionate love while being true to their authentic unique selves.

Learn more at www.fawngilmorekraut.com.

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