Love Him Even If You Fear Losing Him

Happiness is a double-edged sword. Once obtained, you fear losing it. This is especially pertinent when you’ve spent the most of your life with unhappy relationships, only to finally find someone that truly understands you and makes you genuinely elated.

But no, you cannot let fear erode this happiness. Fear is unproductive. It is feeling negative emotion when no actual negative event occurs.

Grief is when you feel negative when something tragic hits you, but not fear. You have to let go of the pressing need for him to be there, that paralyzing fear that creeps in when you envision a life without him. That has to disappear. It is normal to fear losing something you really appreciate.

When we were young and we finally obtained that pen from our teacher after scoring top points in the exam, that pen became our favorite. When we dropped that one pen on the floor, we’ll scramble to find it. When we met our first best friend, we spent a lot of time together. We could talk about everything and trusted each other deeply. But the more we trusted, the more we were afraid of that faith backfiring on us. We were afraid that we would grow out, or even worse, turn our backs on each other.

When we met our first love, we learnt how it was like to appreciate someone and be appreciated. We learnt how to be selfless, and we also learnt how to be insane. We learnt how to skip homework, lose sleep, or even lie to our parents just to spend more time with our lover. But when all the pheromones dissipated, we were afraid of the future. What if our partner was not compatible? Was it pragmatic to stay together? If we were not, how can we ever afford such a heartbreak?

Be it your first favorite pen, your ex-best friend or your first love, you have consistently feared losing everything you treasured. It’s not easy to escape fear because it is human instinct.

What’s scary about your fear is that you’ll start taking little concessions. You’ll start keeping your pains to yourself because you don’t want them to scare him away. You’ll tell him that everything is fine – and in your desire to be with him, you start to discount your desire to stay true to yourself.

Soon you’ll start painting yourself under a different light because you want him to perceive you for what you think he likes, because you fear he will not appreciate you for who you really are. You let fear define who you are, and even after that, you still continue to fear he will leave. Once you begin to have this kind of fear, your genuine self will gradually grow further away from him. These half-truths you tell will one day break you guys apart even though you two were meant to be. Fear is like walking into the sea when the tide is low.

As you trod further into fear, you become increasingly troubled, and you never know when the tide will rise and drown you. On the other hand, hope is like raising the sail in a completely still ocean. There will likely be no wind to carry you through to your destination, but in the event that it comes, you trust that the wind will guide you to safety. Hope and fear are two sides of the coin. Both feelings can be triggered when no actual event happened, except hope is believing something good will happen.

If you never feared losing your pen, you would have brought it to more places with you to pen down many memories. If you had high hopes that you and your ex-best friend would grow into each other instead of apart from, you’ll still be looking forward to having her be your bridesmaid at your wedding. If you had hoped that you and your first love would eventually work out the pragmatic details and strived for a sustainable future together, you would still have had been able to marry your first love.

Forget all of that. Now that you’ve finally found someone you love who also loves you back, do not fear. Love him because of your desire to love, not your need for love, not your need for his presence, and definitely not your heart clinging on to his out of fear.

Love him with a strong, unwavering hope for the future. Love and fear cannot co-exist. If you love someone, you will not fear him leaving. Deep down you already know he will never do that, because he loves you too. Never let fear bury these thoughts deep. Instead, let hope bring them up to the surface. He loves you, and now you just have to love him back, with no restraint, and with no fear.