I dont think ill ever be in love
I don’t think I’ll ever nor have I ever been in love. I’m young and in my twenties so yes I know I could just be saying that cause I haven’t experienced it. But I’m scared I won’t change when I grow up.
My parents, well my mom, kinda instinctively taught that basically being in love is a weakness. Like I’m not a strong independent woman who can make her own decisions if I’m in love. That I’m more an idiot if I love someone and if I do love someone and marry them, I’m gonna hate them in 30 years anyways but stay stuck married to them for financial reasons.
She’s told me this a ton of times, not just lived it. She tells me all the time that no marriage loves each other in old age and im just gonna hate my husband when I get older. And when I disagree she just says it’s because in young and don’t understand.
That kinda stuff I’m seeing now reflects my relationships. I dare people I don’t like thst much because it’ll be easier when they leave me or if they cheat on me. I’ve never been truly hurt before but I’m preventing subconsciously by not truly having feelings for anyone. I’m just dating the ones I know like me and I can put up with their company for a while. It’s the same reason I don’t open up so emotionally or I try and reason with myself at the beginning if every relationship saying I’ll be okay if they cheat or leave me. But I’ll be okay if they don’t. And because of that, it’s always an emotionally tamed relationship. Like I go in expecting it to end and eventually it does.
I don’t know how to unlearn this.
@drzombienoodles
What you wrote is very self-aware, and that matters more than you might realize. You’re not broken, cold, or incapable of love. You’re protecting yourself the only way you were taught how. When a parent repeatedly frames love as weakness, marriage as a trap, and emotional closeness as something that ruins women, that message doesn’t just stay in your head it settles into your nervous system. You learned early that attachment equals danger, dependence equals loss of power, and love leads to regret. Of course you’d build emotional distance. Of course you’d choose people you don’t feel deeply for. That isn’t a flaw it’s a survival strategy And here’s something important you’re not afraid because you’re immature you’re afraid because you’re thoughtful and paying attention to your own history. The fact that you can see the pattern, name it, and question it already means you’re changing. You haven’t “never been in love” because you’re incapable of it. You haven’t been in love because you’ve never felt safe enough to fully risk it. Love requires vulnerability, and vulnerability was modeled to you as humiliation, dependence, or future misery. Why would your mind willingly walk into something it was taught would destroy you? There is nothing weak about love. What’s weak is pretending we don’t need connection when we do. Strength isn’t emotional numbness; strength is being able to choose openness with boundaries, not walls. You don’t have to force yourself to fall in love. You don’t have to “fix” this overnight. Unlearning this looks small and slow:
letting yourself like someone without immediately planning the breakup
noticing when you downplay your own feelings
allowing disappointment to exist without rushing to emotional shutdown
questioning the voice in your head that sounds like your mother’s and asking, “Is this actually true for me?”
Also your mother’s experience is hers, not a universal truth. Many people do love deeply in old age. Many marriages grow softer, not bitter. And many women remain powerful, autonomous, and deeply in love at the same time. Those things are not opposites. You’re not behind. You’re not doomed. You’re not “too guarded forever.” You’re simply at the point where your old coping mechanisms are becoming visible and that’s usually the moment before real change begins. You will not stay this way if you don’t want to. Fear doesn’t mean incapacity. It means there’s something important underneath worth protecting.
Be gentle with yourself. You’re not avoiding love you’re learning how to feel safe enough to let it in.
@drzombienoodles
like any issue or problem, the first step is to identify the problem which you have done. Each person's story is different. Maybe your mom believed it because that is her experience.
I have had 2 great loves in my life, and I would not have passed on it even if one did not last.