Why You Push Love Away + 3 Steps To Stop, From A Psychotherapist

Fear of intimacy isn't a character flaw that makes us unfit for love. In fact, it's at the very heart of the human experience. We have fear of intimacy because love is the most valuable thing in the world, and losing it is perhaps life's greatest pain.

It's what we do with our fear that shapes our lives. 

In my Deeper Dating podcast, I discuss this fear of intimacy. Specifically, how when we pathologize our fear, we feel fundamentally flawed. But when we learn to listen to our fear with compassion, we can move on to the real work and begin changing any patterns of avoidance.

The Harvard Grant Study1—one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies of human development—gives us an extraordinary jump-start in understanding intimacy. Director of the study George Vaillant, M.D., found the most important personality characteristic for finding love and happiness is a mature coping style that does not push love away.

We can't correct all the ways we flee intimacy—it would take until the end of time. But we can start by tackling just one primary pattern we use to push love away.

In his book Change or Die, Alan Deutschman explored why, after having bypass surgery, nine out of 10 cardiac patients were unable to create lasting change in their diets. In further research, he discovered that those odds were almost universal. In other words, as much as we might want to change an entrenched behavior, the chances are nine to one that we'll fail. 

Deutschman began to explore the 10% of bypass survivors who actually changed their diet and maintained that change. He distilled his findings about this extraordinary group into simple three steps that create lasting change. 

When it comes to deeply entrenched habits, willpower is not enough to make changes, so don't go it alone. Forming new, emotionally important relationships with people, groups, or communities helps inspire hope and change.

It's so important that we get to fall short again and again. We have to fail, miss the mark, and extract insight from our messy missteps—but we have to do this in caring and safe company.

New relationships will open you up to new ways of thinking. As you learn these skills, you'll open new channels that bring love into your life and help it stay.

Evolving past our fear of intimacy is a necessary part of love. As the Harvard Grant study revealed so powerfully, in order to lead a happy life, we must develop coping styles that don't push love away.