I googled "fear of love" this morning to find out that it is called Philophobia. And, after reading just one page on this sight, I know for a fact I am one.
I don't know if it is completely due to my childhood or a combination of things, but I had a severely bad childhood. Basically everything under the sun besides sexual abuse was my upbringing till I broke away from my family at 20. I was forced to move around all of my childhood also, never having even lasting friendships.
Unfortunately for me I have a very good memory and was smart enough as a toddler to understand some of the adult things I witnessed growing up, too embarrassing to ever repeat to another human being.
Now at 28 years old, the kindest and the most beautiful woman (I literally mean this) I have ever met has been flirting with (and I back) for 7 months. I am more attracted to her kindness and her character than her body, simply because she doesn't take advantage of people with it. This amazes me.
I mean it with all my soul that I lost my faith in humanity when I was 8, but I want to get it back.
I'm sure from my description of myself that you're imagining a large, scruffy tattoo covered man. I have learned to hide myself very well, since I know for a fact that people are afraid of my full personality.
Ironically, this is the same exact reason the girl I am trying to see is single and interested in me. We both have philophobia. She is a very sincere and bold person, but also twice as kind. We are oodling at each other like nobodies business, but are both scared to make any moves. Everyone I work with is a spectator of this, all of them scratching their heads.
I have been facing this fear head on as much as I can. I put a rose and a note on her windshield, only to see her face the next day (me being insanely curious to her response) covered with the look of absolute dread and fear.
I walked out of my job feeling destroyed, only to go into work the next day seeing her bouncing off the walls. She was thrilled that I liked her as much as she likes me, but was so terrified of me that she was taking out her excitement on everyone else in the room.
See, when I first saw this girl at my job, her eye sockets were bruised and she covered them up with a bad attempt of large sunglasses indoors. She noticed that I saw her bruises and was enraged. At this time, I didn't even know her name yet.
Everyday that I know I'm about to see her, I feel like I'm doing tempting death. I've never felt fear like this in my life, but I'm fighting this tooth and nail because I know I need it. She does too...
She has only just started talking to me back, because after I left a rose on her car, she acted like I was the grim reaper. Now she is full blown hitting on me, now that she sees that I've backed off from seeing her fearful response. I feel like this is going to go on forever with the back and forth.
And yes, this is all 100% true. Two philophobians trying to talk to each other... I feel fricking ridiculous for even trying.
