Issue #80: Why You Struggle to Feel Loved—and How to Change It

I am guessing you don’t like having to read someone’s mind to work out what they like. Stop doing it to others.

*Or anyone

• When you struggle to believe you are worthy of love (and belonging and having good things), you will struggle to receive it.
• When you doubt your worth, when you have an underlying belief system that says you're not good enough (as you are), you will struggle to receive love. And, likely, anything valuable.
• When you fear rejection more than you desire connection, you will likely refrain from asking for what you want. If it’s love you want - connection, intimacy, deep companionship - you will not get it.
• When you believe you don't deserve good things, when you think that you don’t deserve love without performing for or earning it, you're less likely to even consider how you want to be loved, your needs, or to ask for those needs to be met.
• When you believe love must be won or earned, it must be hard fought, you will likely make love hard to get, something you have to fight for. If it comes, you’ll likely block it or make it difficult to obtain.

  That might look like pushing people away, questioning their love or the connection, and doubting people’s motives.

  It could look like sabotaging it, looking for imperfections in the other person, or convincing yourself it’s too good to be true, so you constantly brace for it to end.

Insecurity will do many things. One thing it will do is ensure you continue to operate at the level you believe you deserve.

This is the voice and decision-maker in your subconscious. It will see to it that you only ever get what you think you deserve.

You might say you want love, connection, companionship, you might think you are ready for it, but if you have these deeper beliefs about yourself, love, relationships, your overriding system will inevitably stroll into the garden of your life and take a dump right there on the grass.

To feel loved, you must believe you deserve it, understand how you prefer to receive/be shown affection, and be willing to communicate that to the people you're in relationship with.

Hoping someone is a really good guesser is a terrible way to have your needs met or be loved.

Hoping someone magically wants to work out how best to love you is a terrible way of being loved.

I am guessing you don’t like having to read someone’s mind to work out what they like. Stop doing it to others.

Why does this happen?

Perhaps this is because, as you grew up, you had to perform for love; it only came when you were a good, nice boy, or achieved.

Perhaps your primary caregivers were too involved in their own shit to love you unconditionally and make that imprint on you. Ever since, you’ve placed conditions on being loved, on yourself, you’ve judged yourself, and seen yourself as never quite enough.

Perhaps those primary caregivers weren’t present. Either they weren’t physically there, or emotionally they were absent, inaccessible. That absence imprinted upon you that it must be something about you that caused their love to be absent.

Perhaps you were never shown love. You never felt it and never saw it happen in your household. No modelling of what it looks like to hold another person’s heart and treat it with kindness, reverence, tenderness, and fierce protection.

Maybe it just seems like your specific relationship

Perhaps the reason you don't feel loved by her is that you haven't told her how you want to feel loved. What actually makes you feel loved by her.

Perhaps it's because you don't know yourself. You don’t know what makes you feel loved, or you haven’t allowed yourself even to entertain the idea.

Perhaps it's because, deep down, you still don't believe you deserve love, that you are good enough as you are, that there is something inherently wrong with you. That you need to change or be useful or add value to earn love and be worthy of it.

Perhaps it's all, or a lot, of the above.

If these make up your foundations, it doesn't matter how much money you earn, how much of a 6-pack you do or don't have, how much attention you get on social media, or how much love a partner showers you with; none of it will land until you become a home for it.

Until you can welcome it, feel it towards yourself - at least a deep respect and liking for yourself - you will likely find it hard to receive from someone else.

What can feel like a hole in your life, in the love you're getting or the security you're needing, is often a self-respect-sized hole for you to fill.

Start there, brother.

If this speaks to you - don't just close this and be done with it. Sit down, sit with it. Reflect. Journal - just write down what comes to mind without it needing to be ordered or ‘right’.

Find someone you can chat to about this. Use me if you don’t have someone you feel safe enough to get honest with. But do not let this rest, and be your existence. It doesn’t need to be. 

Even if you think “No no, I’m different, I just need to … earn my way to love by proving myself etc etc etc…” - I’ve seen it. All. Thousands of times. 

There is another way. And it tends to start with giving yourself permission to be open to a new possibility, despite not being able to see it yet or the belief that it’s not true.

If nothing changes… nothing changes.

If you want to change some results, outcomes, or how you feel - you need to change something.

If you don’t know what that something is, then change the isolated approach.

🙋🥁🙋

I’mma keep banging that drum.

Talk soon,

Mike