The Fear of Loving Freely

So many of us guard our love as if there’s a limited supply. As if the more we give, the less we’ll have for ourselves. We ration it out carefully, offering just enough to feel connection but not so much that it leaves us exposed. Maybe it’s because our love has been taken for granted too many times before. Maybe we’ve loved people who didn’t know how to receive it, or we gave it too freely in places where it wasn’t respected. Maybe we learned not to trust so easily. Maybe we realized that the greater the love, the greater the pain when it’s lost.

When we finally find love that feels safe or real or meaningful, we cling to it. We try to hold it tightly, convinced that the tighter our grip, the longer it will stay. We become possessive, not always in harmful ways, but in quiet, subtle ways. We hold onto the illusion that someone else’s love is only ours to take, ours to keep, because we are afraid of what it might mean to lose it. We fear the emptiness it might leave behind.

But true love isn’t something we can control or contain. It’s not something we own. Real love exists in freedom. It lives in the trust we place in it. The faith we choose to have in it. The belief that love does not disappear just because it isn’t constantly visible. That it doesn’t vanish simply because someone needs space or because life pulls people in different directions.

True love isn’t tethered by fear. It is held together by courage. The kind of courage that allows us to let people be fully themselves without making it mean less love for us. It holds us accountable in quiet, powerful ways. It calls us to grow, to communicate honestly, to show up authentically. It doesn’t ask us to shrink or pretend. It invites us to expand, whether together or apart, with respect, trust, and presence.

It feels vulnerable to allow ourselves to love boundlessly. To love without the guarantee of return, without the need for control. It feels risky to keep our hearts soft in a world that often rewards distance and detachment. But strangely, it feels even heavier to hold back. To keep love locked behind a wall of fear. To stay in relationships where we never let ourselves be fully seen or fully known.

I like to believe there’s an abundance of love in the world. Not just romantic love, but love in all its forms—friendship, family, community, compassion. An infinite supply of it, surrounding us, waiting to be received, waiting to be given. But sometimes, we are the ones who put it out of reach. We build stories around scarcity. We convince ourselves we have to be careful, that there isn’t enough to go around. That loving too much means we’ll be left with nothing.

But maybe that’s not true. Maybe we can learn to hold both things at once, the depth of our love and the boundaries that protect us. Maybe we can give generously without losing ourselves in the process. Maybe we can love others deeply, while also loving ourselves enough to walk away from what hurts us. To stand firm in our worth. To know when love is no longer being honored.

We don’t have to choose between loving fully and protecting our hearts. We can do both. We can show up with open hands instead of closed fists. We can offer love without trying to possess it. We can allow love to breathe, to move, to change, and still believe in its power.

Love isn’t meant to be hoarded. It’s meant to be shared. And the more we trust in its abundance, the more of it we seem to find.