Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy and Connection

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It may sound like a silly question, but a lot of broken-hearted folks worldwide are now afraid of love. They are too scared to fall in love again for fear of reliving the unbearable pain they went through. Aggressive, passive-aggressive , or passive methods will not work. If you go to them, they will reject you. If you wait for them to come to you, then you will wait forever. I think it’s really interesting how the truth feels the most free when I don’t feel surveilled. And so I found that transferring that skill into sharing was daunting at first, but I’ve really learned how to just be completely honest in what I share publicly because of the reception that I’ve gotten. I’ve realized that the posts that people resonate with the most are the most honest — the ones where I’m talking about my insecurities or my jealousies or my intrusive thoughts. And at first I think I wrote a little more surface level than that, more general, but as I’ve kind of been running this account and doing my newsletters for a while, I’ve really found that people resonate the most with when I reveal how messy my emotions are and how insecure I can be, how complicated my healing has been instead of me portraying some kind of picture-perfect reality of myself. The more they see you are comfortable with “their crowd,” the more their defenses will consider you as a “safe” person. Do not talk about their past or future

Take things slow. Don't think all the way to the end of the relationship—just focus on small steps, like making a phone call or going on your first date. [13] X Expert Source Donna Novak, Psy.D Intimate and heart-tugging, centered around radical love and rooted in a desire to heal . . . The book ispart memoir, part essay collection, and part spiritual guide, a rumination on healing and Zhu’s journey to rediscover what it means to give and receive love.”As a writer working in memoir, how do you navigate writing about people you know and real life events? Serene, tender, and powerful. In this essay collection, Mimi Zhu reflects on their healing journey as a survivor of intimate partner violence. I liked their honesty about the pain of their abusive relationship and the wide range of emotions they experienced after it. They share many avenues and resources they used for healing, including individual therapy, group therapy, living in a rad group home, attuning themselves toward their body, and connecting with their ancestry and the wisdom of their elders. Their path toward healing wasn’t linear and it took work. They reference several feminist and social justice-oriented texts in this collection, including writings by bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Ling Ma, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Mia Mingus. I cherished and resonated with a few of their insights in particular, such as not conflating the presence of passion in a relationship with actual healthy communication and behavior, learning to prioritize friendship and alternative forms of community over heteronormative monogamous romance, and engaging in mindfulness and appreciation of simple beautiful things throughout one’s day. If you are the martyr type who is in love with someone like that, don’t fret. It’s not the end of the world. There is still a way to turn things around in your favor. It will just take time, a lot of time. Make a conscious effort to think about the things that drew you to your new partner. Think about how much they make you laugh or how thoughtful they can be. Note how different these characteristics are from your last toxic experience with love. Putting relationship baggage in the past doesn’t mean forgetting it. It simply means not letting it affect your current relationship.

The funeral for our relationship helped me to express all my complicated emotions in an alleviating synthesis. In that moment, I no longer compartmentalized my feelings in binaries of good or bad. I stopped chasing utopias and allowed myself to steep in the depths of my grief. I let all the nuanced feelings that were held in both/and to come together and coexist. I finally gave myself permission to miss him as all the joyful, loving, painful, and violent memories played out before me. I wept and sobbed and lamented out loud, sending the lost soul of our love affair to the afterlife. Grieving my life without him meant that I had to usher in a new life. The ceremony simultaneously honored the death of our relationship and celebrated a new mysterious beginning that awaited me. I do not believe that grief ever disappears. Grief morphs and shape-shifts as we honor it, as it begins to entwine with the contours of love. At times, it can tug at your heart and break it, especially on days when you feel vulnerable and tender. On other days, it can fill your spirit with immense gratitude for a life that was shared and a life that continues. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I learned that death is not an ending but a transfer of energy. As our tears send spirits to the afterlife, their energy is transmuted to new life. Our grief transforms, too, into an energy of love. Everything will take time. The moment they are in love with you, they will deny it. They will do all they can to remove you from their lives.We are taught that grief is dysfunctional and unproductive and that it gets in the way of our work. Or we are encouraged to milk our grief and capitalize on our experiences, generating trauma porn for the masses to consume. Either way, we are dissociating from grief and isolating ourselves in the process. When I was presented with the urgency of my mourning [following the end of an abusive relationship], I did not know what to do with my feelings. Instead, I dedicated myself tirelessly to work, to production, to proving myself immune to suffering. Even though death is inevitable, and loss occurs every day, it seems that we are less equipped to deal with it than ever. The Western world is obsessed with binaries, splitting joy and sadness into enemies. In their new book, Be Not Afraid of Love , writer Mimi Zhu explores how rituals around loss can transform deep grief into love. How does one deal with someone who is afraid of love? If you are attracted to such a person, will they return your affection, or are you looking into an unrequited love relationship ? Courting a person who is afraid of love

When I was a teenager, I attended my po po’s (grandmother’s) funeral in Hong Kong. It was a traditional Buddhist ceremony held in a temple, and my extended maternal family had all come to pay their respects. As part of the sacred ritual, we prayed and chanted for nine hours to usher my po po’s spirit to the afterlife. Several monks guided our chants while we were kneeling, standing still, or walking in circles. It was pivotal to chant out loud so that her spirit could hear us, and the louder and more repetitive we were, the better. We had to commit to the melodies of the chant so that our message of grievance was clear. Her spirit needed to hear our grief so she could travel safely. They are no longer willing to leave themselves vulnerable and open their heart and soul to a person and then be cast aside.make sure to look up tw’s before reading as content gets graphic and sensitive in some areas. there are also warnings within the book. Mimi Zhu's Be Not Afraid of Love is the kind of book that is effused with such candor and care that the words themselves become a salve. I am so grateful for Zhu’s words, mind, and existence.”

This book is a continuation of that re-learning, exploring the intersections of love and fear in self-esteem, friendship, family dynamics and romantic relationships, and extending out to its effects on society and the greater political realm. Mimi's powerful and provocative words will guide and inspire readers to lean into love with softness. Be choosy about your partners but don’t demand perfection. Sometimes we fear love because we demand perfection from ourselves and our partners. It’s important to be selective about who you get into a relationship with because people can hurt you or be abusive. It is absolutely not asking too much to be treated well in a relationship. However, if you constantly look for any little flaw in your partner, you will always find one because people are flawed. The key is to find a respectful partner who cares about your needs and feelings and go from there. With respect and kindness as the basis of your romantic relationship, there is a higher chance of success and less anxiety for you. [15] X Research source Avoid the “what if” game. Asking yourself “what if” questions can send you down a rabbit hole of anxiety and fear, and this does nothing to help ease your fear of love. These rhetorical questions usually focus on the negative rather than the positive. Try re-framing these questions in a more productive way.

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Consider some of the most common fears about loving and being loved. Many people have fears when it comes to loving and being loved. Among those fears are the fear of getting hurt, fear of hurting someone, and fear of commitment. Consider these different types of fears and try to determine if your feelings align with any of these categories. [4] X Research source Overcoming failure can be challenging, but it's absolutely vital to overcoming fears about potential future relationships. Some good strategies include recognizing that failure is common and that a failure doesn't mean that you as a person are a failure and turning to others (a counselor or close friend) for help and perspective when we need it. [7] X Research source