The Duality of Fear and Love in Modern Relationships
Goodbye for now, and goodbye it shall be
The closing act of you and me
And I’ll fly far away
With wings crystal clear
A pair of fresh eyes,
And nothing to fear
On my first night out in London last year, (I guess a night out is a stretch, we went to a pub for like 5 hours) I ended up stuck talking to a very into-himself millennial man. He did that thing where he immediately sized me up for a manic pixie dream girl type. It happens a lot. I mean, I dress like a slutty Disney Channel extra and I only talk about Bojack Horseman and Robert Frost. The fact that anyone willingly hangs out with me…
Anyways, this man was doing his darndest to come across as intellectual and deep. At one point, he took my uninterested hand, looked deep into my contact-encased eyes, and begged:
“So, tell me lovely, what truly is your biggest fear?”
Immediately annoyed with an added desire to be annoying, I gave him an honest answer.
“Birds.”
He laughed nervously and waited for me to say just kidding.
“Oh uh, no I mean like for real. You know rejection, failure, death, etc.”
“Oh right. Hmmmmm. Yeah. Birds.”
He gave up on me after I pleasantly murdered our conversation.
Listen, it’s true! I am deathly afraid of birds. I cower just at the thought of one flying over me. I have left my best friends for dead running away from swooping seagulls. However, I know this guy wanted me to get deep so he could fake some emotions and get into my pants. Fair enough. I guess I just find that question annoying, “What is your biggest fear?” To highlight one personal fear above the rest seems impossible, and in actuality, our many fears are all kind of glued to each other in some way.
So what actually is fear? It’s a loaded question I know. People have been trying to figure it out for a long-ass time. I’ll tell you now I definitely do not have the answer, as the word itself keeps changing in my head as time goes on. I guess for now I am interested in exploring fear through an emotional, even romantic lens, because it gets brought up constantly in these situations, but with no further input on what it is we are so afraid of, many are left disillusioned in their heartbreak and/or abandonment caused by such fears.
I was reminded of that fateful late August night as recently I have had to deal with the aftermath of external fear. To SparkNotes it for everyone who does not have to suffer through my close friends' stories: I was in a situationship (yes, foolish, I know) that could not result in a real ‘relationship’ (I know the term alone is terrifying), because of the other person and their fear. Now, like most people reading this, in any other circumstance, I immediately would have thrown that out as the lamest excuse in existence. If you don’t want me, just say that and accept the fact that I will slightly dislike you for eternity. Unluckily enough for me, I had really gotten to know this person, more than I had anticipated, and I somewhat knew what they meant. Or, at least, I could legitimately feel their fear as the impenetrable fortress that stood in our path. Often you cannot explain feelings, and so I have struggled to explain to my friends the reasoning behind our ending of things, especially since I lacked permission to ever label what this person and I shared as serious or real, despite it being both of these things, at least to me. I didn't really want to stop seeing them, and I debated continuing our casually non-casual fling without the label I craved, but I knew that would only worsen my suspicions of not being truly cared about, and possibly pass on such great inexplicable fears to me, the last thing I wanted. I could also just be an idiot for possibly allowing another person to hurt me and get away with it, guilt-free because I believed in the words they said to me at the end, empty promises of “I do care” and “I will miss you.” However, as of now, I still have reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. I may be a fool, but I am a kind fool.
So whether fear is a viable reason to not continue seeing someone you care about, or an excuse to make one look better when they simply do not have feelings for someone who does, I think it is a useful tool in exploring the way we build or perhaps destroy our relationships with one another.
When we say fear holds us back in relationships, often people refer to the fear of hurting someone else. Well, I got news for you, Buster: unless you want to live in the cave of unfeeling for the rest of your days, hurting others is a shitty aspect of being alive. When it comes to sharing your life with another person through deeper emotional understandings, hurt cannot be avoided. Hurt, pain, loss, etc. are necessary ingredients in the circle of life. All that time spent agonising over causing another pain, just for that same person to write silly little articles to keep them from crying over you again… seems a little trivial now. We all worry about this, because we are human beings, and for the most part, we care about those around us to the point where it blinds us from sensibility. I wish for all of us to stand a little taller and brace for the inevitable heartbreaks in exchange for the miracle of compassionate and loving relationships. Personally speaking, my heart is saturated in bruises, adorned with tatters, and decorated in cuts. Like an old dog and his favourite tennis ball, I see my dilapidated heart as all the more gorgeous that way. I also like to believe that whoever picks my heart up after my last attempt at a throw is like me, a mender who yearns to be mended.
With all that being said, I think our greatest fear in matters of the heart has everything to do with looking inwards toward the self and our perceptions of it. From the god-awful reality of past traumas lurking as close as they possibly can, to the fact that there is no one on this earth you forgive less than yourself. It’s simple to say that no experience is the same and comparison to the past will only keep you there, just as it is simple to say one can only be at peace when one has mastered self-forgiveness. To actually see these ideas through, in action and feeling, is a difficulty even experts struggle to match. Still, I do think all fear stems from the ferocious beast we face in the mirror every single day, and understanding this allows us to move forward a bit. Even my severe ornithophobia comes from a strange combination of past trauma and my unachievable desire to grow wings and fly. Blame the fear of the self’s inability to achieve or the rogue seagull population of Popham Beach Maine, it’s clear that just taking a step inside myself leads to some explanation as to where all the terrible fright comes from.
Now, none of these points are that original. Philosophers have been doing this whole fear of the self thing forever. Even if every story has already been told, you made it this far, haven't you? Plus, if there is one thing I am truly unafraid of, it’s rambling on and on about age-old concepts that have no real answer to them. Even then, because of fear, — whether real or not,— I am still left embarrassingly heartbroken over someone who would likely cringe from said admittance of being heartbroken. I am not going to let fear hold me back from my own truth, however, even if that’s what held them back from theirs.
If I can leave you with anything here, I’ll say this: Fear will conquer us time and time again. As much as it pains me to say it, more often than not, fear even conquers love, but only because fear is a part of love. To embrace fear and admit its presence is the first step to overcoming it. More-so, I think the bravest thing one can do is accept the fact that not all fears can be overcome, but all can be confronted to some degree or another, and at the end of the day, all we can do is try our best. Fear is brutal and love is patient. Let them meet as one and maybe we can set ourselves free from our own loving and quivering hands.
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Photography submitted by Christo Viola