MY ‘PHILOPHOBIA’ - PART 1

Falling in love is such a common dream, isn't it? Of course, I was no exception. I dreamt of a person sweeping my feet off the ground, sending me the wonderful electric jolts and making all my unrealistic expectations in life come true, taking my hazardous city life away to a beautiful, serene small town and we live happily ever after. Even until now, I will still do anything for my Fairy Godmother if it takes her to swish-and-swoosh this young dream into my reality. How I wish that a love life can go as smoothly and perfectly as we had imagined before acknowledging the rough patches to spark and maintain an intimacy. A lovely fairytale bedtime story.

If there's one thing about me, is that I am a CRAZY dreamer. I have always loved reading fictional stories, and enjoy creating and developing characters (or, as fanfiction content creators call it ‘OC’s), visualising the lowest possibilities and making up the plot of my future plans. As you can probably puzzle it up, this leads me to be a mad perfectionist in everything - yes, this includes my college assignments, work tasks, house chores, social life, (back to the topic) love life, etc.

*Just to clarify my connotative definition  of ‘love’ in this entire post, I really do mean the lovey-dovey and Nicholas-Sparks-stories category of love, and not the family/friends love. (UPDATE- Why did I need to include and feel the need to add this in the first place?)

Up to the age of fourteen, I thought that when I finally meet the love of my life, all my worries and insecurities will be washed away, and every single one of my desirables will be fulfilled. I guess it took me long enough to be mature and realize that this ‘love of my life’ is also a flawed human being, who also seeks for attention, meeting expectations and rewards in a relationship, and has their own quirks in personality and nature - not a Gary Stu/Mary Sue Charming in a supporting role. (Have I been this selfish for the first 14 years of my life?)

This notion has brought a toll on me - when it comes to love and the whole dating shenanigan - and this leads to the topic of philophobia. I can already feel eyebrows raising or scrunching at me as I am typing. Philophobia, the fear of being in love (and being loved, in my case), seen in people who have gone through a traumatic relationship and experience. Here I stand in the crowd, because a part of me retain an unwarranted and irrational fear of not being able reach my younger self’s beautiful expectation. It is as if my mind stubbornly wants my life go according to the fairytale plans, to only ever be in one relationship that will last a lifelong, and any spontaneous traces of ‘hey, I think I like this person’, that does not fulfill the petty and absurd criterias is not acceptable.

And, that's just a fragment of the factors that contributes to this fear.

Disclaimer: I am aware that claiming to have a phobia should be taken less lightly. It probably is not wise for me to talk about this without being diagnosed or having cogent arguments, as there are others out there who suffer with this terribly. Please take this in with an open mind, and understand that I am speaking out to share my individual account to the topic, and hopefully help those who can relate to it.