What If I’m Incapable of Love?

I’ve experienced moments of being undeniably and wholly consumed with love – in family, friendship, romance, nature, creativity, and spiritual pursuits. We’re talkin moved to tears love. Feel it in my bones love. Capital L love. However, I’ve also felt periodic moments of alienation and nihilistic, existential self-doubt wherein I question my very capacity for love. We’re talkin born alone, die alone doubt. Terminally unique doubt. Capital D doubt.

What if I’m incapable of love?

Maybe you’ve experienced the private embarrassment of not knowing the answer to this terrifying question. Perhaps you’ve somehow managed to evade it altogether (good for you). But I recently had the opportunity to reflect on it and wanted to share my musings.

Prerequisites for Love

What is required of us to truly love? To begin with, I think a profound sense of connection and belonging is necessary.

When I feel alone, isolated, and different (which is what trauma does to everyone, btw), it’s difficult for me to give and receive real love. I can “perform” love, mimic love, and do lovey looking things. But to truly feel it deep down – to be love – I have to know you, be known by you, and to know that we are part of the same whole. Made of the same stuff. Inextricably linked. No better than or less than. No separation, secrets, pretense, or yeah buts.

And I think this requires radical authenticity – a recklessly courageous ownership of one’s own sloppy ass human experience. Deep vulnerability. Damn near full transparency with what is happening inside you. Your thoughts, feelings, wants, needs, fears, etc.

But also, many of us have had plenty of experiences that suggest this level of vulnerability is not safe. That being our authentic selves can only result in rejection, abandonment, abuse, ridicule, neglect, enmeshment, or whatever awful thing happened to us long ago when we armored up. Someone showed us that we weren’t good enough. And we believed them.

So maybe love, for many of us, demands that we heal the wounds of our past.

What Is Love?

I think love is when someone outside of you is able to connect with the life inside you. So when your inner life and outer life are completely separated or incongruous, that’s obviously a major impediment to love. This is why I believe authenticity is absolutely necessary; why vulnerability is the price of admission to a real relationship.

According to Pia Mellody, “Intimacy means sharing and receiving reality from another person without judgment. We can share three forms of reality: our body (physical/sexual), thoughts (intellectual), and feelings (emotional).” So tactfully communicating our truth and our experiences with our partner is what builds a bridge between our outer and inner life so love can traverse the treacherous waters of our own perceived separateness and unreachability.

If I tried to present some perfectly polished, cordial, artificial intelligence ass version of myself to my wife, there would be nothing real for her to connect with. I’ve noticed that when I am my most human (sick, injured, sad, struggling, or whatever) I feel my wife’s love most intensely. And she can be a paragon of efficiency most days. She’s essentially the COO of our marriage. But when she is her most flawed, authentic, human self – that’s for sure when I love her the most.

An Invitation to Love

If I invite you to a party and you decline the invitation, I can take it personal and make it all about me. How I’m not good enough, you don’t like me, or whatever. Or I can simply conclude that you’re not available. Simple as that.

Maybe sharing your authentic self with another person – the good, the bad, and the ugly – is such an invitation. You’re showing them the bridge between your outer life and your inner life. Giving them an opportunity to love you. And maybe they’re available for that and maybe they’re not. Either way, ya can’t take the shit personally when not everyone shows up to the party.

When you invite someone to love you, you are asking them to drop their armor and be super vulnerable and authentic as well, which is a HUGE ask. Something many people hardly achieve in this life. And it could potentially require a tremendous amount of healing work on their part, depending on their traumas and past experiences.

So I think the most we can do is work on becoming our healthiest, most authentic and vulnerable selves while taking up company with those who are brave enough to join us in the endeavor. And maybe we can teach each other to love. For nothing is more inspiring and empowering than seeing someone else take the risk that you yourself have been avoiding.

As Rumi once wrote, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

And if you can remove those barriers, then yes… you too are capable of love.

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