What Keeps Us from Letting Love In?

“Life is a gift that can only be truly enjoyed when we stay open to being loved.”

For something so essential and life-affirming, love can be one of the hardest things to truly receive. Not the idea of love, or the desire for it — but the lived experience of being fully seen, valued, and cherished. Many of us long for that kind of love and yet, when it appears, we resist it. We push it away. We question its sincerity or sabotage its presence.

Why? One reason is control. There’s a strange safety in holding power — even when it’s rooted in fear, manipulation, or withdrawal. The negative ego thrives on dominance, and love threatens that. When we let ourselves be loved, we lose the positions we’ve used to justify defensiveness, superiority, or blame. Love softens those edges, and that can feel like a loss of power — even though it’s actually the beginning of true strength.

Another reason is responsibility. Being loved isn’t passive. It asks something of us. It asks us to show up with integrity, to care for ourselves, to stop self-sabotaging and punishing others. That can feel like a heavier burden than any professional, parental, or personal duty we carry — because it requires us to live from who we really are. And that means letting go of guilt as a motivator, releasing martyrdom, and stepping into humility and emotional maturity. When we are loved, we no longer have the “right” to destructive behaviour. We’re called to something higher, and that can feel terrifying.

Sometimes we resist love because we’ve grown used to punishing — ourselves or others. Punishment can feel powerful when we’re hurt. It becomes a coping strategy, even an addiction. But it’s a coward’s mask. Beneath it is unspoken pain, rage, and a longing to be understood. To receive love means facing those feelings and giving up the false security of anger or control. It means going cold turkey on emotional habits that have defined us for years.

Then there’s the issue of worthiness. Some of us reject love not because we don’t want it, but because we don’t believe we deserve it. That belief can take two forms: arrogant defiance (“I’ll prove I’m unlovable and get sympathy or leverage”) or deep sorrow (“Something in me is broken, beyond fixing”). Either way, the door to love remains closed. And no amount of analysing or effort will open it. Only forgiveness and grace can. Only the willingness to let love in anyway.

Others of us stay locked in identities of victim, martyr, or the perpetually wronged. We feel angry at life, at the Divine, at those who didn’t show up for us. We think: I won’t accept love until the injustice is acknowledged. But waiting keeps us trapped. That anger must be expressed, not suppressed. Only then can it release its hold on our hearts.

Some resist because they simply don’t trust — not others, and not themselves. Trust must be rebuilt, slowly and deliberately, through presence and truth. And finally, some of us refuse to create our own happiness. We carry the belief that our parents or someone else should have made us happy, and since they didn’t, we hold them responsible. Our suffering becomes a kind of silent accusation: See what you did to me. But healing demands something else. It requires that we stop waiting for an apology and choose joy anyway.

The Energetics of Love

What are the active qualities that support the frequency of love?

·       Humility – Staying open to things being new and different; a willingness to be changed by love.

·       Courage – the strength to stay vulnerable and open, to drop your defences and remain receptive.

·       Caring – An act of being present; caring for and caring about.

·       Respecting and Responding - Respect expressed through action. Taking responsibility, knowing your presence and choices have an impact.

·       Knowing and Intimacy – Awareness both of and about the other, and being deeply engaged with the experience rather than repeating the familiar. Intimacy is the higher octave of knowing, and together they lay the foundation for closeness and tenderness.

·       Giving – Offering love with the intention to instil it in another, not as obligation but through caring. Through giving, we offer: Security, Pleasure, Vulnerability, and Honesty.

·       Commitment –to remain consistent, attentive, and caring. True commitment eases the fear of loss through trust and presence.

·       Forgiveness – The release of resentment and judgment. To be humble enough to surrender judgment and be willing to let go of the past in order to create something new.

·       Trust – The bridge between love and safety. Trust is what allows security to form and softens the fear of loss.

The truth is, being loved is powerful. And with that power comes change — the kind that asks you to be honest, humble, and open. Not perfect. Just willing. Love is not something to earn. It’s something to remember and step into. And in that remembering, we return to who we truly are.

“Our soul is perfect and pure in essence. Every human being is therefore worthy of being loved. If we place ourselves outside of that equation, we will simply continue to see ourselves as flawed or deficient.”