Philophobia also commonly knows as: The Fear of Falling in Love, has been around for many centuries. The well known Queen of England for example, Elizabeth l is thought to have suffered from Philophobia herself. Despite her well known romance with Lord Robert Dudley and her coming very close to marrying Duke of Anjour (brother of the King of France) the queen never wed. Philophobia is not a new concept at all, however it can be difficult to comprehend. One can easily understand the fear of spiders (arachnophobia) or the fear of heights (acrophobia), but to understand why someone may be scared of a feeling, as this is love in its simplest component: love is a feeling, may be harder to get your head around. I will aim to help you understand why some people may not want to fall in love.
First I want you to answer the following questions.
-Do you like feeling vulnerable?
-Do you like giving someone power over your emotions, and ultimately your actions?
-Do you like feeling out of control?
-Imagine taking some cocaine every day of being in a relationship with someone. Does this sound like a good idea?
I should probably start with explaining the last question. Helen Fisher (a biological anthropologist and human behaviour researcher) investigated couples in their early relationship stage, by examining their brains. She found that they had high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine stimulates ''desire and reward'' feelings, through triggering an intense rush of pleasure, which is the same effect that cocaine has on the brain. In simple terms, does that mean that being in love is equivalent to taking cocaine? Probably not. But the fact that it has the same effect as consuming drugs doesn't sound too appealing. After all relationships are important and should be viewed with a clean mind, being in love changes our brain chemistry, thus changing the way we think.
Back to the first three questions. You know that saying ''Love makes you blind'', well it does. Love has the cunning effect of making your lover appear more appealing than they really are. Thus making you potentially vulnerable to the one you love. This means your lover could be telling you white lies all day long and you being blindly in love with them, may find it challenging to distinguish truth from lie. Furthermore, it is usually difficult to crack through someone's skin and to truly know who they are. Today we are influenced by a variety of factors that determine whether we like or dislike someone, and as human beings most of us want to be liked and accepted. Agree? This leads to us changing our behaviour in order to be liked. Did you ever lie about liking a particular band or football team, just because other people in your social group did and you wanted to fit it? This type of change in our behaviour is called conformity, in particular it is often referred to as normative social influence. The worst thing about this is that people will often lie to your face just to make you like them, they will tell you what you want to hear, which can ultimately lead to you falling in love with a stranger. And by that time it's too late. Even when the true colours begin to show, you will be too blindly in love to see them.
What hurts the most about falling in love is that being in love you will develop something called "Trust". With love comes trust, and with trust comes truth. Too often with truth becomes betrayal, and betrayal results in pain, and with pain comes never being able to trust again. Being in love can cause to you trust someone you shouldn't. Falling in love can increase the level of trust you have for someone, making you more prone to revealing information that you otherwise would feel is too personal to disclose. When we are in that euphoric moment it is very easy to make a foolish decision or trust someone with something close to the heart. Now, I'm not telling you to never trust anyone, but learn the lesson now, and just be careful with who you trust. Chose wisely when giving someone a piece of your soul.
Being in love means becoming attached to someone, and attachment sucks. There is just so many things that you could lose once you're attached to someone. They could die. They could leave you. They could find someone better. They could not feel the same way. They could lose their feelings for you, They could disown your trust. They could break your heart.
Below is an account of how a philophobic person feels, perhaps you can see why she is scared of being in love, perhaps you can understand why she doesn't want to be in love.
''The possibility of allowing myself to be wholly in love with him is terrifying. What's more terrifying is the fact that I hold little control over my feelings, and I know that one morning I might wake up and be completely and irrationally in love with him. I can feel myself falling deeper and deeper in love each passing day, and every night the fear grows stronger. Something or someone will come in the way of our love and my heart will be broken. I will be broken. Forever. In Pieces. Pieces I will never put together. Perhaps he himself will realise that he can do better, and see that he's worth so much more than me. Me who is stuck in luke warm water. In love enough to stay not to go cold, but not ready to fully enter the passion. That fear of him abandoning me, or me breaking up with him is heartbreaking itself. My mind, body and soul have all fallen in love with him. I've never been in love before, but if love exists then this is it.
If it comes to me ending us, it would never be because I stopped loving him. No. That is hardly possible. It will be because my fear took the best of me and I'd rather break my own heart than have it broken by him. I can take the pain I inflict on myself but I would rather die than feel pain caused by the one I love.''
Love doesn't come easy. Love is difficult to keep. Love needs to be fought for. It's OK to be scared but give Love a chance... it might surprise you.
