Afraid of Being Hurt? Why Love Is Worth The Risk:

by Randi Gunther

Are you insecure?

Maybe you don’t bother to date because you don’t want to get hurt again. You’re tired of putting yourself out there and giving a relationship your best only to have the rug pulled out from under your feet.

You might not admit it to yourself, but you’re afraid. Instead, you mask it as—“Oh, I don’t need a relationship.” Or, “I’ve got enough going on in my life.” Or, if you’ve recently had a bad breakup, “I’m just not ready.”

Maybe you DO go out on dates and are open to meeting people. But it’s torture. You get excited about someone, only to have your euphoric feelings turn into anxiety and doubt—wondering if you said or did the right thing.

You really, really want a relationship, but as soon as things start getting a little serious, you become a basket case. If your new partner goes out with friends and doesn’t invite you, you immediately go into panic mode, thinking for sure they’re losing interest.

In either case—whether you go on hypervigilance or you just don’t get involved at all—you’re insecure.

And that’s okay.

Know That Everybody Is Insecure

Even the most confident person in the world feels insecure at times.

Now with the advent of podcasts and tell-all biographies, you’ll find countless celebrities and successful people admit that they’ve experienced many moments of insecurity—fearing the loss of a spouse, a job, an opportunity, their health.

In fact, if someone seems supremely confident to the point of bombastic, you can be pretty sure the person is trying to hide a boatload of insecurity. They can’t bear to admit their fear or risk appearing weak, so they cover it up.

So, if you’ve ever been told you’re too insecure by a partner, know that the person telling you this was not immune to insecurity.

Our insecurity comes from knowing, deep down, that nothing in life is permanent. We may walk around as if life were forever, but we know otherwise.

This primordial knowing stirs up all sorts of unease in us, because it means that try as we might, nobody is in control.

And this is especially apparent in romantic relationships.

Accept The Fact That Security Is An Illusion

The minute you open your heart to someone, you know they can break it.

After four decades as a therapist, I’ve been in the middle of heartbreaking tragedies, none of which these people expected or were wholly prepared for.

Affairs, terminal illness, crises involving children, financial disasters—my patients have come to me with a myriad of problems that have threatened to destroy their relationships, or bring them down altogether.

I’ve suffered with them and for them, watching the process of grief unfold as it must. The lesson: Change is inevitable, and we must embrace it.

There is no guarantee that any relationship will work out—but if you commit to giving it your all, you will always know you did everything you could to create something magnificent.

Risk Goes Hand In Hand With Excitement And Discovery

When uncertainty hits, as it always does, you have two choices: ride the wave, or be drowned by it.

Dating is a no-guarantee proposition. You may find a perfect match, fall madly in love, be completely happy together, have a family, and then an unthinkable illness hits one of you.

Yet for many people, “Nothing ventured, nothing lost” has become a strategy to try to stay safe. If this is you, you are trying to control the uncontrollable.

If you do this, you will stay in an imaginary box, never allowing yourself to experience all of life, including the joy of a truly connected relationship. You might never be hurt, but you will also never experience excitement and discovery.

The only answer is to risk.

Though every one of us is continually balancing between security and risk, we can live precariously with an impassioned devotion to being safe at all costs, but we can’t be fully alive without a commitment to challenge and transformation.

If You Want To Find The Love Of Your Life, You Must Be Willing To Risk It All

You will never have the relationship you’re meant for if you allow fear to run the show. If you try to control the uncontrollable by staying out of relationships or by becoming hypervigilant of any sign of being left by your partner, you will end up either alone or never fully able to relax into a relationship.

You can’t close off to potential heartbreak without also closing off to potential joy. If you choose to keep your heart in an emotional castle surrounded by a moat of doubt, you could become locked into the sanctuary of loneliness you created.

Fear will paralyze you into powerlessness.

And the fastest way to stop feeling powerless is to make a choice.

When I work with singles who are insecure in romantic relationships, I help them repurpose their fear into action. I teach them a method for dating that turns their fear into an ASSET—helping them show up in relationships as authentically as possible.

This brings up a lot of fear in the beginning, but as they push through it, they discover a part of themselves they never knew—a FEARLESSNESS that finally allows them to attract the person they’ve been wishing for all along.

I want to help you do the same through my program Dating Rehab. This program puts you—instead of your fear—in the driver’s seat of your romantic destiny. You will learn a counterintuitive (but wildly successful) process for dating—from the very first hello all the way to a committed relationship and beyond. You’ll learn:

• How to move past the fears that are holding you back from giving and receiving love
• How to qualify potential partners from the very beginning, so that you don’t waste time with partners who aren’t capable of creating a healthy relationship with you.
• What to do when a man starts off very interested in you but then seems to become distant—and how to weather common relationship “growing pains”
• Specific ways to create true intimacy and connection from the beginning—rather than the superficial encounters that never get off the ground
• How to transition early romantic chemistry into long-term partnership—plus tips from my “stay-in-love couples” who are still crazy about each other years later

As you work your way through this program, I will take you by the hand just as I have done with all my patients. I’ll tell you everything I know about finding love and keeping it alive for a lifetime. I’ll also ask you some tough questions that will keep you on track toward your goal.

I’ll also take the guesswork out of dating for you—telling you exactly what to talk about on those first few dates so you get the critical information you need early on.

What’s more, you’ll learn to view dating as a great big adventure—rather than an obstacle course—so that even if a certain relationship doesn’t work out, you’ll know you brought your very best self to the picture. The irony is that when you date this way, you stand a much higher chance of finding the person who will do everything they can to create lasting love with you:

When you live from your authentic self—rather than your fear—you will feel insecurity melt away as a sense of purposeful power enters your heart.

xoxo,
Dr. Randi

P.S. Are you still bitter from a past heartbreak?

Resentment and bitterness will cause you more harm than any one broken relationship. If you don’t take the steps to move past it now, you’re likely to attract even more painful relationships in the future.

In my program Dating Rehab, I’ll guide you through a step-by-step process I’ve taught hundreds of singles to bring them out of bitterness and into the mindset and heartset that finally brings them lasting love: