Feel deprived of love? Think it’s because your partner doesn’t love you enough? Well, you could be right. Sometimes it is because your partner is withholding. But it might not be about your partner at all. It might just be about you. You may not feel loved for a couple of reasons. 1) You withhold love and therefore don’t get it back, and 2) When love comes to you, you push it away.
Let’s look further into the first reason: you withhold love.
What we put out, we often get back. So if you withhold love, your partner is likely to do the same. Conversely, if one of you breaks the pattern and starts giving more, there’s a good chance the other will follow suit. Not always, but when you give love, your chances of getting it back increase. Even if your partner doesn’t follow your lead, giving love feels good, so you win anyway. That is, if you just appreciate the good feeling of giving and stop focusing on getting it back. You’ve obviously chosen someone who has a hard time with intimacy, and that’s a responsibility you need to accept. And if the situation is intolerable after you’ve tried you best, you could choose to move on.
Now let’s delve into the second reason: you push love away when it comes to you.
Why is it that you push away the very thing you want? One reason: you’ve been hurt by love. You’ve reached out and it wasn’t returned. So now you pull back and are less willing to put yourself out there. Problem is, if you don’t make the effort, you stay in a deprived state. Not a place you want to be.
If this description sounds like you…time to be brave, stop protecting yourself and take a risk. It’s true you might get hurt, but love always involves hurt. And you can learn to get over it. Protecting yourself, on the other hand, guarantees status quo. Is that really what you want? I doubt it, but the choice is yours.
In summary, if you are not getting the love you want, make an honest exploration. Is it your partner, or is it you? When you admit the truth, you can proceed from a real place. Keeping yourself deluded won’t get you anywhere.
Check out my book, The Affair: From Breakdown to Breakthrough, A Therapist’s Real-life Journey, to learn more tips and insights about relationships. You can buy it on Kindle worldwide from all Amazon websites, including www.amazon.com
Adventures in Love 
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