There are people in the world for whom love is just a word. This feeling has no meaning or value for them. This position is often based on a direct inability to love, which can be formed by various circumstances. Often, such an inability to feel is fueled by a perceived - or not - unwillingness to give love to another person or the world around us as a whole.
Many psychologists are of the opinion that only the person who experiences this feeling towards himself is capable of love. In other words, those people who are disdainful of themselves, are in a hostile relationship with themselves, are not able to give love to another person. Such personalities, as a rule, have practically no empathy: they do not know how to “read” other people's emotions and sensations, to catch what the other person feels. And they are not able to give love in response to such a feeling.
Self-love is the basis for the formation of the inability to love. But, besides this, five points can be distinguished that affect the ability and desire of a person to experience strong and vivid feelings, share them with others and the world.
A problem that comes from childhood
In a situation where the inability and inability to love originate in childhood, there can be two options for the development of events.
- If there is no demonstration of feelings in the family, there is no talk about emotions, it is not accepted to show love, then the child gradually begins to form an inability to love. He does not see in front of him a correct - adequate - model of behavior that he could adopt. For him, limitation of feelings becomes the norm. Therefore, having become an adult, such a person may feel confusion, awkwardness or even anger when someone expresses romantic sympathy towards him, demands love from him. In the worldview of such people, the ability to love simply does not exist. They do not understand why it is needed, what is the meaning and why to say some words, to perform any actions.
- Children who grew up in families in which they lacked warmth and affection, as a rule, also lack the ability to love. Parents and the immediate environment did not put this skill in them, did not fill the child with love, did not form a sense of self-worth in him. As a rule, such individuals can seek romantic relationships, but in order to fill the inner void. They will bathe in the feelings of other people or their passion, while not giving anything in return.
Concentration on achievement
Experts adhere to the idea that goal-oriented people, the so-called careerists, have a tendency to be unable to love. For such individuals, the first place is not attitudes and emotions, but achievements, goals, success and results.
Direct workaholics can also be classified in this category. As a rule, individuals who are immersed in work do not know how to love and relax. From their point of view, emotions and feelings can be regarded as something useless, distracting and even burdening.
According to statistics, many workaholics become such because of the desire to escape from any everyday problems and situations, because of the desire to escape from oneself, their inner feelings and unresolved inner conflicts. Often, the cause of psychological discomfort is precisely unfulfilled love or non-reciprocal sympathy. Therefore, the inability to love in this case may be based on a banal unwillingness to experience something like that.
Negative experiences from the past
People who have once experienced dramatic events associated with feelings and directly love, may at one moment, as it were, lose the ability to love and experience any related emotions.
In this case, inability, again, can be reinforced by unwillingness. In addition, often fear, negative excitement, inner anxiety and anxiety, a gloomy outlook on life and relationships become those fontanelles that feed the inability and lack of desire.
Excessive self-love
Despite the fact that psychologists identify a person's love for himself as the basis for the ability to experience this feeling towards the world around him and other people, excessive concentration on himself can lead to negative consequences.
Painful egoism, pathological narcissism can become the reasons why a person does not know how, cannot and does not want to love. Such a person is completely focused on himself, seeks to please himself, constantly maintain the most comfortable conditions for life, to fulfill exclusively his whims and desires. People with similar traits can find it difficult not only to love, but also to build friendships or even working relationships.
Failure to idealize
Oddly enough, but from the point of view of psychiatry, the inability (inability) to love is literally a painful condition. In psychiatry, the inability to experience this feeling is often equated with a severe neurotic disorder. Why? For the reason that a person who has consulted a psychiatrist or psychotherapist has certain traits and symptoms that indicate pathology. Among which there is an inability and unwillingness to experience romantic feelings.
The very feeling of love presupposes a conditional idealization of the chosen object, be it another person or life in general, the world around us. If a person cannot or does not want to prescribe ideal traits to an object, she will not be able to really love. Such inability or unwillingness, as a rule, is based on fear: fear of attachment, fear of disappointment, fear of moral pain, fear of dependence, and so on. Experts note that very often people who do not know how to love are vulnerable, sensitive, anxious, suspicious and fragile.
