Can You Love Someone And Still Be Scared Of Them?

My name's Mark, and you're listening to Headstraight. Hello, Hula, and welcome back. Now today, there's a really interesting subject that I wanna talk to you about. It's about when you have two feelings that don't seem to belong together. And so the question that's come up is, can you love someone and still be scared of them?

Now a lot of things have happened over the last few months or so to bring this question to my mind, so I've been thinking a lot about it recently. And the more I've sat with it, the more I've realized that it's one of those questions that sounds simple until you actually try to answer it. Can you love someone and still be scared of them? The first time I really stopped and thought about that, my instinct was to think, well, surely, those two things shouldn't go together. We grow up believing that love is supposed to feel safe, comforting, and reassuring.

So if fear is part of the picture, it's easy to assume that something doesn't quite add up. But the more I've thought about it, the more I realized that life doesn't always fit into these neat little boxes that we'd like it to. Maybe you've caught yourself thinking exactly the same thing. I love them, but you know what? They scare me as well.

And perhaps almost as quickly, you've found yourself arguing with your own thoughts because they don't seem to make sense. Surely, if somebody loves me, I shouldn't be frightened of them. And if I'm frightened of them, perhaps I can't really love them. It feels like one of those statements where one half ought to cancel the other out. The trouble is, that's not how real life always works.

Now, one of the things that I notice is that the fear usually isn't there all the time. If somebody frightened us every minute of every day, perhaps we'd find it much easier to understand what's happening. But that's rarely the story people tell. They talk about the good days as well. The ordinary days.

The moments where this person makes them laugh, understands them better than anyone else, apologizes for what happened yesterday, or promise that things will be different. Now sometimes they genuinely feel like the safest person in the world. And then something changes. Now it might be the tone of their voice, a particular look that nobody else would notice, or simply that feeling in your stomach that tells you that it's time to be a little bit careful. And without really noticing, you start changing too.

You choose your words a little bit more carefully, avoid certain conversations, and find yourself watching their mood before you decide whether it's safe to say what you're really thinking. That's the bit I've always found really interesting because none of those experiences necessarily stop someone loving the other person. If anything, they often make the whole situation even more confusing. You're left trying to work out which version of the relationship is the real one, And that's a question that doesn't have an easy answer. And I think that's the conversation that I want us to have today.

Not really a conversation about abusive relationships or warning signs, because I think that would make this episode much smaller than it needs to be. I want us to think about something much more human than that. I want us to explore what happens when your heart is telling you one story, your instincts telling you another, and you're left trying to make sense of how both of those things can feel completely true at exactly the same time. Now, the one thing that I keep coming back to is the realization that perhaps the hardest part isn't the relationship itself. It's what happens inside our own heads whilst we're trying to make sense of it.

Now I think most of us like certainty. We like people to fit into neat categories because it helps us know where we stand. Sometimes someone is either kind or unkind, trustworthy or untrustworthy, safe or unsafe. It makes the world feel organised. The problem is that people rarely stay inside those categories.

Someone can make you feel completely loved on Monday and leave you walking on eggshells by Tuesday. They can comfort you one moment and unsettle you the next. And when those experiences sit side by side, your brain immediately starts trying to solve the contradiction. Now, I've often wondered whether that's why people spend months or even years trying to work out what kind of a relationship they're actually in. They're not necessarily ignoring what's happening.

They're trying to solve a puzzle that doesn't seem to have an answer. Because if somebody can be so kind, how can they also be frightening? And if they can sometimes be frightening, doesn't that mean that all kind moments weren't real? Now there are all sorts of questions that just don't leave you alone. They follow you into bed at night.

They pop back into your head whilst you're walking to school or sitting at work. You replay conversations, trying to work out whether you misunderstood them. You replay arguments, wondering whether you somehow caused them. You replay the good moments too because they don't seem to fit with everything else that you've experienced. I sometimes think that's why people become so exhausted in these relationships.

This isn't just because of what happens between two people. It's because your brain never really gets a chance to stop working. It's constantly trying to make sense of two completely different versions of reality, hoping that eventually, they'll come together and finally make sense. But perhaps we've been asking the wrong question all along. Maybe the question isn't which version of this person is the real one?

Maybe it's why do I feel as though I have to choose? Now this got me thinking about something else while I was putting this episode together. We often talk about love as though it's a switch. As though the moment somebody hurts us, love should disappear and suddenly everything becomes obvious. But that's not how real people work.

If it were, breakups would be easy. Family disagreements wouldn't last for years. We'd never miss people who let us down, and we'd never find ourselves thinking about someone long after they've left our lives. Love isn't something that usually disappears because of one difficult moment. It builds over time through memories, shared experiences, routines, hopes for the future, and all the little moments that connect us to another person.

And that's the reason why it can continue to exist even when other emotions begin to appear alongside it. I sometimes wonder whether people become frightened by the fact that they still care. They start thinking, if I still love them, then maybe I'm making too much of what actually happened. Or perhaps, if I can't stop loving them, maybe that proves that everything is actually okay. Now I'm not sure either of those conclusions is necessarily true because loving somebody and feeling safe with somebody aren't actually the same thing.

I think that we've actually merged those two ideas together as though one automatically guarantees the other. Now it would be great if life worked like that, but relationships are often far more complicated. You can deeply care about somebody whilst also recognising that something about the relationship doesn't feel right. Those two experiences don't cancel each other out. In fact, that's probably the reason why people find themselves stuck for so long.

They spend months trying to get rid of one feeling because they believe that they're only allowed to have the other. They think that they have to decide whether this is a loving relationship or a frightening one when their actual experience is that it somehow feels like both. Perhaps that's why this question feels so lonely. It isn't simply that you're trying to understand another person. You're also trying to understand yourself.

You're asking whether your own feelings can be trusted when they seem to point in completely different directions. And maybe that's where we need to begin. Not by asking do I love them or even do they love me, But by asking a quieter question that often gets lost underneath everything else. What happens to me when I'm with them? Because sometimes the clearest answers aren't found in what somebody else says.

Sometimes, they're found in the person you slowly become around them. And here's another thought. I wonder whether our bodies sometimes understand what's happening long before our minds are ready to catch up. Just think about that for a moment. Have you ever noticed yourself feeling relieved because somebody canceled seeing you even though you've been looking forward to it all week?

Or perhaps you felt your shoulders tense as soon as you see their name on your phone before you'd even had time to think about why. Maybe you've walked into a room and instantly found yourself checking what sort of mood somebody was in before you decided how to behave. Those reactions happen really quickly. They're often so automatic that we even barely notice them. We just assume that that's how life feels.

What interests me is that people often ignore those experiences because they don't fit with the story that they've been trying to tell themselves. If their relationship is supposed to be loving, then why would my body react like this? If they're a good person, why do I suddenly feel an edge? If everything's okay, why do I always feel relieved when I know that they're not going to be there? Now they're uncomfortable questions because they don't have a simple answer.

Now, I wanna be careful here. Because feeling anxious around somebody doesn't automatically mean that they're dangerous. There are all sorts of reasons why we might feel nervous, especially if we've been hurt in the past or struggling with anxiety generally. I don't want this episode to become about distrusting every uncomfortable feeling we ever have. But I also don't think that we should dismiss those feelings simply because they don't fit the version of the relationship we'd like to believe in.

Sometimes our bodies are quietly collecting information that our minds haven't quite found the words for. Perhaps that's why so many people say things like, I knew something wasn't right, but I couldn't explain why. It wasn't that they had evidence that they could neatly lay out on a piece of paper. It was that somewhere inside them something never completely settled. I think we often underestimate just how exhausting that can become.

Living with that constant sense of uncertainty means that you're not only trying to understand another person's behavior, you're constantly questioning your own reactions as well. You stop trusting your instincts because you're forever asking yourself whether you're overthinking, overreacting, or just imagining things. And that's a really difficult place to live. Because once you stop trusting your own judgment, you don't just become uncertain about the relationship. You become uncertain about yourself.

One of the reasons I wanted to make this episode is because I think people are often far too hard on themselves when they're feeling confused. We seem to have this expectation that if something is unhealthy, we should recognize it immediately. We imagine that difficult relationships come with obvious warning signs and that if we're sensible enough, we'll spot them straight away. But that's not how life usually unfolds. Relationships don't arrive fully formed.

They develop over weeks, months, and even years. They grow through shared experiences, trust, memories, and hope. Sometimes, the things that leave us questioning ourselves don't appear until we've already invested a huge part of ourselves in another person. By that point, you're not just trying to understand what's happening today you're trying to fit today's experience alongside everything that's happened before it. And perhaps that's why confusion can last for so long.

It isn't because you're weak. It isn't because you're naive, and it certainly isn't because you're choosing not to see what's in front of you. Sometimes, you're simply trying to make sense of two experiences that genuinely don't seem to belong together. And I think that's a much kinder way of looking at ourselves. Instead of asking, why didn't I see this sooner?

Perhaps we could ask, what was making this difficult to understand? Now that's a very different question. The first assumes that you failed. The second assumes that there was something genuinely difficult to work out. And that shift really matters.

Because when we stop treating our confusion as evidence that something is wrong with us, we create a little more space to become curious about what that confusion might actually be trying to tell us. Now I've often thought that curiosity is one of the most underrated things that we can bring to our own lives. Not curiosity about the other person. Curiosity about ourselves. Why do I always feel relieved when I leave?

Why do I spend so much time trying to predict somebody else's reactions? Why have I slowly stopped saying the things I used to say without thinking? Why do I always feel more like myself when they're not around me? Now those questions aren't proving anything. They're there to help us notice something.

Because sometimes, the first step towards understanding a relationship isn't making a decision about the other person. Sometimes, it's quietly recognizing what's been happening to you. Now as I was thinking about how to finish this episode, I realized that we'd spent a lot of time asking this question. Can you love someone and still be scared of them? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the answer is probably, yes, you can.

Not because love and fear naturally belong together, but because human relationships are complicated. Our emotions don't neatly organize themselves into those little boxes, and they certainly don't arrive in the right order. We can miss somebody who hurt us. We can love someone who's disappointed us. We can care deeply about somebody whilst recognizing that being around them changes something inside us.

And I don't think there's anything strange about that. What matters is what we do with that understanding. Because perhaps the important question was never whether you still love them. Perhaps the important question is whether the relationship is slowly changing who you are. Have you stopped laughing as much?

Have you stopped saying what you really think? Do you find yourself apologizing for things that aren't really yours to apologize for? Have you started feeling responsible for somebody else's moods? Have you begun to believe that keeping the peace matters more than being yourself? Now those are very different questions.

They're quieter. They're less dramatic. But I sometimes think that they're far more revealing. Because relationships don't just shape the way that we feel about another person. Over time, they shape the way that we feel about ourselves.

And perhaps that's what I want you to start noticing after listening to this episode. Not whether you can prove that somebody else is loving or controlling. Not whether somebody else would agree with your interpretation. Just who do you become when you're with them? Because that's a question nobody else can answer for you.

Only you know what it feels like to walk into that room. Only you know what it feels like when your phone lights up. Only you know how much of yourself you've slowly had to put to one side. And sometimes noticing that isn't the end of the journey. Sometimes, it's simply the beginning of understanding something that you've been trying to find words for for a very long time.

Now, if you've been listening to this and finding yourself thinking about somebody in your own life, I don't want to finish by telling you what your relationship is or what you should do next. I don't think anyone can make those decisions for you, especially not somebody that you've never met talking on a podcast. But I do think there are a few questions that might be worth sitting with. Not because they'll immediately give you an answer, but because they might help you to understand your own experiences a little more clearly. For example, when you're with this person, do you feel more like yourself or less?

That's a deceptively simple question, but I think it's a powerful one. Healthy relationships don't expect us to become somebody else. We all compromise, of course we do, and we all adapt to the people that we care about. But there's a difference between growing alongside someone and gradually disappearing inside the relationship. Another question might be this.

When something goes wrong, do you feel able to be honest about how it affected you? Or do you find yourself editing what you say, softening your words, or convincing yourself it's probably better not to bring it up? And perhaps one final question. If somebody you cared about described this relationship to you exactly as you've experienced it, what would you notice that perhaps you've stopped noticing in your own life? Now that last one is one that I've always found an interesting exercise to do, because we're far more compassionate and perceptive when we're thinking about somebody else than when we're thinking about ourselves.

And sometimes creating that little bit of distance helps us to see things that have slowly become normal. Now I also wanna say something that I think is really important. Listening to a podcast doesn't mean that you have to make a decision today. You don't have to leave a relationship because of something that you've heard me say. And equally, you don't have to convince yourself that everything's fine because you can't quite make sense of it yet.

Sometimes understanding comes before decisions. Sometimes it takes a while for all of the pieces to settle into place, and I think that's okay. There doesn't have to be pressure to have all of the answers by the time this episode finishes. Sometimes, the most important thing that happens is that you finally found some words for an experience that never really made sense before. So one final thought.

As I was coming to this last part, I found myself coming back to the title one last time. Can you love someone and still be scared of them? When I first started thinking about it, I assumed that the episode would end with an answer to that question. But instead, I think it's left us with a much more interesting one. Perhaps the question was never really about love at all.

Perhaps it was about permission. Permission to admit that something doesn't feel right even when you can't explain why. Permission to recognize that caring deeply about somebody doesn't automatically make every part of the relationship healthy. And perhaps more importantly, permission to trust your own experience even when it's messy and confusing and doesn't fit neatly into the sort of story you wish you were living. Because life is rarely as simple as we'd like it to be.

People don't always fit into categories. Relationships don't always make sense. Our feelings certainly don't arrive neatly labelled. Sometimes we love people who hurt us. Sometimes we miss people we know aren't good for us.

Sometimes we feel relieved when somebody leaves the room and then guilty for feeling relieved in the first place. All of that is part of being human. But if there's one thing that I'd like you to take away from today, it's this. Your confusion doesn't automatically mean that you're misunderstanding the situation. Sometimes, confusion is exactly what we would expect to find when someone is trying to make sense of two experiences that don't seem to belong together.

So if you've recognized yourself anywhere in this conversation today, don't put pressure on yourself to have everything figured out by tonight or even next week. Just stay curious. Keep noticing. Pay attention to who you've become around people in your life. Pay attention to the relationships that leave you feeling more like yourself and the ones that slowly ask you to become somebody else.

Because I have a feeling that that is where some of the clearest answers begin. So next week, we have another question. Are you up for it? Of course, you are.