Are you blocking love? Reveal your 'love cracks'

Reading time: 9 mins

"I decided to block love because in my mind, it was the safest thing to do. But by doing so revealed tiny 'love crack's that became large 'love cracks'. I wasn't merely just feeling sad and annoyed anymore, my love cracks were deeper than that - I was disrespected, hurt, betrayed, heartbroken, neglectful of self love love and neglectful of my own self worth. All these love cracks became so large that my heart shattered into pieces and I was so, so broken" - Kathleen Sleigh

This is post 3 of 3 of the final request made by my biggest fan Ishual (#jewelofthenile7). Her suggestion was the concept of 'love cracks', a concept I had not quite heard of before. I knew that this would take doing some research in order to understand it and be able to write about it. This concept of 'love cracks' is something that Ishual heard about from a woman named Christine Arylo who is a feminine leadership advisor, best-selling author, transformational speaker and most importantly, renowned for being the founder of the international path of self love school.

In order for me to understand what love cracks are, I did some reading on what Christine had written about in terms of love cracks and how they allow us to block love. She stated that:

We push love away.

We protect ourselves from getting too close.

We isolate.

We overstay in relationships that don’t serve us".

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Christina also explains why we choose to block love:

"There is good reason for why we developed these strategies around how we let love in, or don’t. Our beautiful, loving, open hearts have at one time or another been tromped on, hurt, broken or betrayed (creating what i call “love cracks”, and so our normal, and probably necessary action at the time, was to build walls, "force fields", layers of protection around our heart".

I think we can all resonate with this because at some point or another we have all put the protective blanket on and have been on the defence mode when choosing relationships. We put walls up so that we cannot let people in but by doing that, it makes us work even harder than we need to, we feel more lonely and more disconnected to ourselves and to love. We overstay in relationships that are toxic for us. We put these walls up and block love because we think it's a healthy way of protecting our heart but really, we are going off the vibe that we fear getting hurt and expect to get hurt. And what's the result? Choosing men or women who are so unhealthy for us, who disrespect us, who act distant when they decide they have gone in too deep. And the one important point that I got from Christine is that we bring these self sabotaging actions on ourselves... just like I mentioned in my last post about being the emotionally unavailable woman. No one has got a gun to our heads making us choose to self sabotage, we decide that for ourselves. But it isn't a healthy pattern to what I would call "protecting" yourself from love. I think people get confused about and misuse this term because when we think of the word "protect" we automatically go into defence mode as if we are preventing something bad from happening to us. The way we need to look at allowing ourselves to meet the right person and letting them in is by choosing healthy behaviours. Behaviours like self love, telling ourselves how worthy and loveable we are, being involved in activities that make us feel good about ourselves and getting rid of that "protection'" label, because that gives off a very negative connotation. What you're actually doing is attaching the protection label to fears and insecurities, hence why walls go up and you block out love.

The more we block out love, the bigger our love cracks become, and the thicker our layers of our walls of "protection" become, because we are trying to cover up and hide our love cracks. We don't just go through the initial emotions of feeling sad and annoyed when a guy or girl is not giving us what we want. The more we subject ourselves to those unhealthy relationships, the bigger the love cracks get and the more serious they become - we start to feel ashamed, worthless, not loveable, depressed, heartbroken, betrayed and our hearts are squashed and shattered into pieces. And by that point you are too broken to even begin to understand why it is you feel so worthless. If you truly valued yourself and were secure about yourself, you wouldn't allow yourself to get to this point. Remember, it's all on you. You have the power to either self sabotage or choose healthy behaviours like self love, in order to be open to love and not allow your relationship choices to be defined by your love cracks.

I guess one way of understanding our love cracks is by thinking of them as fears. What are your fears? What stops you from being open to a healthy loving relationship? This is all going back to my suggestion about writing down your list of fears and insecurities so you can recognise them, address them and kick them to the kerb. I know it isn't easy and I think we often feel like we can't repair our love cracks because they have become so damaging. But I can assure you that you are worth more than subjecting yourself to giving up and having such a pessimistic mindset about love. Yes, we have all been hurt and heartbroken, yes we have all been through loss but we need to remember that we are not the only person going through it, we are not alone. There are so many people out there who have got it so much worse than us for example, people who get divorced or people who lose their partner through sudden death, murder. I only know the pain of a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship ending and I can't even begin to imagine the pain of a divorce. And then there are those people who have their love taken away from them so unnecessarily through death and feel like their whole world is over... Yet I know of people who have gone through that pain and gave themselves time to heal, be themselves again and opened themselves up to love, and are now in really healthy loving relationships. And that's because they chose not to suffer anymore, they chose to want better for themselves because they believed they were worthy of love. One of my favourite quotes is:

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional".

- Haruki Murakami

We can't avoid getting hurt and we can't avoid pain from occurring, but we can choose how we respond to that pain. Choosing to respond to pain by blocking out love and letting our love cracks define us is not a healthy way of responding to pain. You need to be kind to yourself and want more for yourself, to want better for yourself because that is what you deserve. You might think that you are secure within yourself by putting a wall up because that means you can't let anyone hurt you... I used to feel empowered by that all the time. But it never got me the relationship I wanted, EVER. I was in denial about my fears and insecurities so I put that wall up to hide them. But it was those very fears/love cracks that determined the people I was choosing to be in relationships with. And they were never healthy relationships. Remember, "your vibe attracts your tribe". Don't attract a tribe that does not serve you, attract a tribe that is going to make you feel like you are worthy of love, a tribe that you never have to question your self worth around or doubt yourself around. This is the tribe you need to be open to loving, not blocking. And the longer you continue to block out love, the more you are hindering meeting the right person. And if you do end up meeting a good person (not necessarily the right person, because we can meet good people along the way who are not meant for us but teach us that we are worthy of love) and you have chosen to block out love, you will end up ruining things with them and sabotaging the relationship with them because you think you don't deserve someone like them. Then they end things and walk away because they cannot be around someone who doesn't believe in and value themselves. And then you sit there wondering why they walked away and why you have to go through all that pain and hurt again.

Accept and acknowledge the pain you have been through. Accept that you have flaws, fears and insecurities. Accept that you can and do deserve to change so that you can be open to love. Don't be afraid to open your heart up to healthy choices, it's what your heart needs to be healthy and happy. It's what YOU need to feel healthy and happy.

Don't be ruled by your love cracks. Imagine that they are are a disease or virus that you are trying to get rid of. You want to get better and be better, so say goodbye to those love cracks, cleanse them out of your system and make the change to being open to love NOW. Don't be the person who blocks out love to "protect" yourself. You're not doing yourself any favours. You're not protecting yourself, you're just covering up a whole crack load of fears that can never be repaired if you don't choose to repair them.

Remember, these choices are on YOU. Only you can decide what you are willing or not willing to tolerate. What I do know is that you do not deserve to tolerate unhealthy relationships.

You have the power to want better and to be better. So use that power, because it is a force that should be reckoned with.

P.S. Ishual, I hope this clarifies things for you and puts your own life into perspective. Thank you so much again for giving me the opportunity to dedicate these posts to you. Lots of love to you girl!

XXX

#relationships