Philophobia – The fear of falling in love.

Are you the type of person who automatically feels uncomfortable whenever the idea of falling in love pops into your head? Do you feel uneasy whenever your friends start asking you about your love life; and your plans for getting into a relationship? Well, if you answered yes to both these questions, then it’s highly likely that you are someone who has serious philophobia – and this is the perfect article for you.

But first, it’s essential to establish: what exactly is philophobia, and why is it necessary for you to know what it is in the first place? What are the symptoms that come with having this fear, and how could having this phobia affect the way that you live your life?

How do you know if you have Philophobia?

In a nutshell, philophobia is essentially the fear of falling in love. Some of the symptoms that accompany this fear are as follows:

• An inability to open up to anyone on an exceptional and intimate level.
• A sense of well-being that is purely dependent on the validation of the people they are in love with. This can often lead to someone feeling emotionally unstable, anxious, and uneasy.
• Rapid heart rates, chest pains, and shallow breathing.
• Panic and anxiety attacks. It’s essential that you can recognize these symptoms if they start to present themselves in your life. The more knowledge you have about being afflicted with philophobia, the easier it will be for you to overcome it. After all, life is supposed to be all about us conquering our fears and eliminating our weaknesses.

There is no denying that falling in love is a beautiful and wondrous experience. There’s a specific high that you get when you know you get to take care of someone who cares about you in return. There’s a certain camaraderie and connection there that you won’t be able to emulate with any other person in this world. It’s almost an indescribable experience. No words that have ever been written can do it justice. However, due to the duality of life, love also has an unforgiving side.

If you’re not careful or if you’re just plain unlucky, love can also break you. But just because you fail at love once doesn’t mean that you should be scared of it forever. Love is always worth fighting for, something that is still worth taking a chance on. If you’re curious about your fears of falling in love and whether you have this phobia, read on to learn more about the signs.

Five signs you have Philophobia.

1. You carry a lot of emotional baggage from the past.

You are affected by traumatic events from your past. Maybe you have already had your heart broken once by someone before, and you’ve never been able to recover. Perhaps you still haven’t moved on from it. Or maybe you are a child of a failed marriage. Maybe your parents divorced or separated when you were younger, and that has emotionally scarred you. One of the top reasons for Philophobia.

2. You find it immensely difficult to trust other people.

You have already been in a real relationship with someone once before (it could be either a romantic or a platonic one). And in that relationship, you developed a certain closeness with another person. You allowed yourself to trust them and be vulnerable with them. But what do you get in return? You get betrayal. You get stabbed in the back. And it hurt you. And you don’t know if you can bring yourself to trust anyone ever again.

3. You think that being in a relationship is equivalent to being trapped.

You have this philosophy that all intimate relationships are somehow chains and prisons that keep you from getting where you need to be. You feel like relationships only hold you back in life. You feel like relationships are killers of freedom. You feel like being in a real relationship with someone is essentially you giving up your sense of self.

4. You get very uncomfortable when you start to get intimate with someone.

It’s not that you don’t connect with people. You still connect with people, but you always put a stranglehold on that connection. You always set a limit on it. You never allow it to get deep. You never allow it to grow strong. You never let it go beyond a certain point if you have Philophobia.

5. You enjoy sex, but you don’t know how to deal with the awkwardness that comes after.

You like sex. It’s physical, but it doesn’t always HAVE to be emotional. But the fact that you don’t want to involve yourself in the psychological aspects of it makes it awkward for you when the sex is done. What do you do? How do you act? What is the proper etiquette? It all freaks you out on an immense level.

Talk to me (discuss)

Do you have Philophobia? Talk to me about it in the comments, below! 🙂