There are an umpteen number of phobias out there. Phobias come in all shapes and sizes as there are an infinite number of objects and situations. If you can think it, even though it seems so irrational, it does exist.

Today I am here to share more about philophobia and maybe after reading this you would realize that this is a phobia that can be overcome. A lot of people say “you can overcome any fear that you have.” They are right, a lot of it has to do with our minds. I would say a physical phobia like Aquaphobia, fear of the water, sometimes is deemed easier to overcome as perhaps you have to experience it and it will be okay.

Then again, who is anyone to say that any phobia at all is easy to overcome? It will take time, it will take patience, it will take consistency and it will take a lot out of someone if they want to overcome a fear. It is hard, but it is not impossible.

Philophobia is the fear of emotional attachment, in particular being in or falling in love. When someone says “I am afraid of love and commitment”, they may get a high-five or even a response “it is because you have yet to find the one.”

What is “the one”? Some sort of soulmate perhaps? Do soulmates even exist? We all have varied opinions on this matter and we are entitled to. I for one, do not believe in soulmates. There was once an article about if love is a choice or a feeling. The author shared so many ways in which it is a choice. There were counter articles about it too.

If you were to answer that question, just for yourself, what would you say? Is it a feeling or is it a choice? To me, it’s a mixture of both. You need to have the feeling of love. You need to be brave and stupid at the same time because love hurts, but it is also one of the most beautiful feelings out there. It becomes a choice too, when things get tough, do you walk away or do you fix it?

When you start falling for someone, you fall for all the little things that makes them who they are and you fall so hard in love. Everything seems right, and then after a while, bit by bit, a lot of it crumbles. You allow yourself to be vulnerable, open up to the one you wished with all your heart was going to be “the one” and then it does not work out in the end. You trusted someone whole heartedly and you are left broken. Then what?

Some people have a serious case of philophobia from the very start. A lot of others, tend to develop it after really bad past experiences because they never want to be hurt that way again. The fear creeps in and eventually you are beginning to ask a lot of “but-ifs”. You start to create all these scenarios that would end up leaving you hurt before it even happens. It’s either you avoid falling in love from this fear or if you are in a relationship, you fear further emotional attachment, connection and commitment.

It’s been said that we really only fall in love once in our lifetime. That may be true, but I beg to differ. I think we fall in love at least three times. If we are lucky, all those three times is with the same person, if we aren’t that lucky, it could be with three different people. We do not need to consider ourselves unlucky as we need each of this love for different reasons.

The first time, everyone deems it as the best. Is it though? It’s great and we think it’s the best, but just you wait till the second time it hits you. We fall in love the first time, most of us young at this point. For girls, it’s like a fairy-tale, you get to be the princess in this story. For boys, well congratulations, you get to brag about your new love and also bask in all it’s glory, for love is truly wonderful.

You stay in it after a while because you have this belief that this will be your only true love. When things does not seem right, you convince yourself that this is what love is supposed to be. This love looks right as others view it as right and you quietly succumb to it more than how you truly feel overtime.

Eventually it does not work out and you move on. Bear in mind that if you still are with the same person, take into consideration that you have fallen out of love. The second love comes in later and the chances of philophobia building after the first love is there but the chances are slimmer.

You fall in love hard. They say love hurts, and they were not joking. Beauty comes at a price and I do not need to reiterate how beautiful love is. This love hurts and aches the most, but it also is the one that teaches us so much. This hard love teaches us who we are, who we want to be, how we love and how we want to be loved.

A pressing issue with our second love would be that it is a toxic cycle. More than not, we deny how toxic it can be. I am referring to mental toxins in this situation. We hang on and cling to this love with our dear lives because we think that somehow the ending would be different than before. We want it to work out so much, we would give it all it takes but ignore the fact that each time we try, it somehow ends worse than before.

We go through an emotional roller coaster, and behave like drug addicts when you take away their stash. The addiction to it is the exact reason why we stick through the lows over and over again with expectation of the high to come. This cycle makes us insane. When someone says, “I’m crazy in love” and is smiling, it’s because they are experiencing the extreme highs, wait till that roller coaster takes a 90 degree drop!

The biggest issue with this love is that we wished it was right so much that trying to make it work becomes more important than whether it actually should. This is where for most of us, philophobia begins taking over. You thought what you had previously with the first love was hard when you opened up. You thought wrong. The second loves occurs and this person waltz into your life and parades, jumps and stomps all over your heart and you allow it.

You never thought you could love someone this much and there you are, practically ripping your own heart out and handing it to them to take care of it. You trusted, you loved, you let them in and refused to let them go. You held on for so long until holding on was getting much more painful than letting go. Time goes by and you finally do it. You let go. You let go good, hard and you shut out everyone and everything. You shut out chances, new people, new love.

You were bruised, scarred, bleeding and broken and you want to heal. You want to heal so badly that you refuse to let anyone near you. You hide the side of you that yearns for love and build a wall to keep love out. You do not allow yourself to get committed because you fear things are going to go bad, rotten all over again.

Just when you thought “this is it”, it finally happens. The third love takes place and it’s the love that we never saw coming. It could be with the same person we fell out with or a completely new person. It does not matter because this is the love that lasts.

This love destroys any lingering ideals you have clung to about what love is supposed to be. This is the love that came by so easy, it does not seem possible at all. You simply cannot fathom where the connection truly began and it knocks you off your feet as you did not plan for this.

This is the love where we come together with someone and it just fits! There aren’t any ideal expectations about how each of us should behave, nor is there pressure to become other than we are. We are just simply accepted for who we are already, and it scares us to a point it shakes us to our core.

This third love was not what we ever envisioned our love would be, nor does it abide by the rules that we had hoped to play it safe by. It shattered our preconceived notions and shows us that love does not have to be how we thought or dreamed about, in order for it to be true.

This love is stubborn yet patient. Stubborn enough that it keeps knocking on our door and patient as regardless, how long it takes us to answer it, this love will be there, relentless. This third love just feels right.

It is alright to be afraid of love and of being loved. Maybe we can all start by loving ourselves, clearly not to a narcissistic level but just enough to give ourselves room to love a little more tomorrow. All the love that I have shared above, the three kinds of love, maybe we do not even get to experience them in our lifetime. What if that is because we just aren’t ready to?

Maybe the reality is that we need to truly learn what love is not before we can grasp what it amazingly is. Some of us need a whole lifetime to learn each lesson, what if for you, it only takes a few years? What if you are among the lucky ones? Perhaps, it isn’t about luck and if we are ready, but if love is ready for us, then let us just embrace it.

You see an old couple who says that they have been married for 70 years. You start tearing and looking at them in awe with how far they have come. Truth is, you never did know if they were each other’s third love or along the way, it was beautiful as they experienced all three loves. None of us will ever really know.

I know you are tired of trying, we all are. I know you have been broken, we all have. Don’t belittle yourself by laying your heart in front of you watching it beat painfully and wonder if there is just something inherently wrong with how you love. Here’s the thing, you love people with passion, with all your heart.

Stop for a second to think, are you loving them the way they want to be loved. A lot of times we love our partners the way we want to be loved. Start loving your partners the way they want to be loved and it’s just a matter of time before your partner loves you like you have never been loved before as he/she is showing love and is giving love, the way you want.

Do not hate on love or even fear it. Just because it did not work out before, does not mean that it would not work out now. Should we really be limited by how we love instead of loving without limits? Ultimately we have the choice. As hard as it is, we can choose to stay with our first love, as it looks good and make others happy. We can choose our second love and live in that delusion that if we don’t have to fight for it, then it’s not worth loving.

Do not mistake me, we should fight for our love, fight for our beliefs. Overtime, if it’s just fights and you’re stuck in a loop, all I am saying is to really think. The decision is still yours to make if you want that or if you want to give the third love a chance. Give the one that feels like home without any rationale, the love that is not like a storm but rather the quiet peace of the night after, the love that makes you feel whole, an opportunity?

There is no doubt that the first love was special and the second love had it’s own flare of being heart-breakingly unique, but the third love, it is truly amazing. The one that you never saw coming, the one that actually lasts, the one that showed you why it never worked out before. The beauty of the third love would be, it’s that possibility that makes trying again always worthwhile, because the truth is you never know when you’ll stumble into love.

Philophobia is no doubt a scary phobia, but if you can, do it for yourself and fight it. Allow yourself to love and be loved. Bask in all the magnificence of love because despite the pain, there is nothing like love. There are almost 8 billion people on this planet, it is not wrong to want to be alone. It is just wrong for you to want to allow yourself to be lonely. Do not choose the path of loneliness.

After all, it is ultimately nicer to be alone together.

Show: The Simpsons

Characters Involved: Homer Simpson & Moe Szyslak

**(The picture shows, The Simpsons: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa & Maggie)**

Scene: Season 20 – Episode 16 {Eeny Teeny Maya Moe}

xoxo