Why Is It So Hard to Receive Love?

December 2nd — Standing beneath that quiet chandelier, I noticed I didn't know how to receive light without preparing for loss. 

A Quiet Hesitation

There are people who soften the moment love appears. And then there are people like us —
the ones who need a breath, a pause, a moment to make sure the world is still safe.

Not because we don't feel deeply, but because something inside slows down
as if the body has to check for exits before it can exhale.

I used to think this meant I was distant. Now I understand it differently. It wasn't distance.
It was protection.

And maybe you know that quiet hesitation too.

When Receiving Love Feels Foreign to the Body

For some of us, love wasn't something we rested in. It was something we managed.

The nervous system learned to stay alert even in soft moments, because softness was not the same as safety. Warmth could arrive one day and disappear the next. Affection could feel real in the evening and unreachable by morning.

The body stores that uncertainty — not as a memory we can recall, but as a reflex that activates
before we even know why. So when love is offered now, the mind may understand it, but the body braces.

Not because the love is wrong, but because the body has never learned what it feels like to relax inside something that stays.

When Love Was Something You Worked For

Some children grow up learning to read the room before they ever learned to read themselves. They become the calm one, the reliable one, the one who senses tension before anyone speaks.

In homes like that, love is rarely gentle. It comes with conditions, with performance, with silence,
with responsibility that arrived too early. The nervous system adapts. It learns to stay small. It learns not to expect softness. It learns that being needed is safer than being cared for.

These patterns don't disappear with age. They simply become invisible. Which is why receiving love as an adult can feel overwhelming even when nothing bad is happening.

It is not resistance. It is the body remembering what once kept it safe.

Why Letting Love In Can Feel Riskier Than Keeping It Out

Giving love is predictable. It keeps you in motion, in control, one step ahead.

Receiving asks for something else — stillness, visibility, surrender. For a nervous system shaped by instability, stillness can feel like exposure.

The fear is rarely about the love itself. It is about what love could take with it if it ever leaves. Hope becomes the vulnerable part. Attachment becomes the risk. Closeness becomes the place where loss becomes imaginable again.

So the body hesitates not because it doesn't want love, but because it remembers what happened the last time it opened without protection. That memory isn't a story. It is a sensation.

Beginning to Receive in the Smallest Possible Ways

Healing does not mean suddenly feeling comfortable with closeness. It means allowing the nervous system to learn, slowly, that safety and softness can exist in the same moment.

Sometimes the first step is noticing the instinct to pull away and offering yourself one quiet breath before acting on it.

You can place a hand on your chest or your belly and say,
softly enough that only the nervous system hears it:

"You don't have to open.
Just notice that you're safe."

There is no pressure to feel anything. Safety comes before softness.

Over time, you might allow yourself to stay in warmth for two seconds longer than you usually would. The body doesn't need intensity — it needs repetition.

And if words feel possible, you can whisper to yourself in the moments
when receiving feels unfamiliar:

"I am not in danger.
This is not the past.
I am allowed to be cared for."

You don't have to believe it immediately. Worthiness is not a feeling — it is a practice of allowing good things to reach you even before the mind has caught up.

For those who survived by being self-reliant, one of the bravest ways to receive love
is learning to ask for help in small, low-risk places. Not because you are helpless, but because the body needs evidence that support can arrive without punishment, debt, or disappointment.

The first time you ask for something and it is met with kindness — no withdrawal, no anger,
no cost — the nervous system learns a new possibility:

"Nothing bad happened.
I wasn't abandoned.
Someone stayed."

This is how receiving begins. Not through forcing the heart to open, but through collecting gentle proof that closeness and safety can coexist.

A Soft Somatic Practice

Find a position where your body doesn't need to perform. Sitting is enough. Lying down is enough. Let your hands rest somewhere that feels natural. The body chooses the place, not the mind.

Take one slow breath in through the nose without trying to deepen it.
Just notice how the air arrives on its own.

On the exhale, allow the shoulders to drop, only as much as they want to.

When you're ready, place a hand over the part of your body that feels the most neutral — not the most emotional. Neutral is the goal.

You don't need to speak,
but if words feel possible, offer:

"You don't have to open.
I'm just here with you."

Stay for three breaths.
Not longer.

The practice ends before the body tightens. The ending is the medicine. Receiving begins here, not in opening, but in presence without demand.

Let that be enough for today. 🩷

A Soft Reminder for Anyone Who Needed This

You are not difficult to love. You are someone whose body learned to stay safe
in a world that did not always offer safety.

The hesitation is not failure — it is loyalty to a younger version of you who survived in the only way she/he knew how.

Receiving love is not about trying harder. It is about letting your body discover, slowly,
that this time is different. You don't have to open all at once. You are allowed to let love arrive in pieces you can hold without trembling.

And if this feels tender for you, know that I'm walking this slowly too.
We're learning side by side — one soft step at a time. 

You're never late, and you don't have to come open. Just come as you are. 🩷 

If you need a quiet corner on the internet — a place without pressure, where softness is allowed to stay — you can find me on Instagram at @selflavie. ✨

Soft hugs,
Selflavie