We could each have amazing qualities inside us. We all have beautiful qualities this world needs. It might be our ability to sincerely show our compassion. It might be our ability to make another person feel like a million bucks, or our ability to cook like the world's best chef, or our ability to just hold another human being in such a way that they feel wanted, or our ability to light up the other person's heart with our smile. It varies and the list is endless. How can another human being see our inner qualities and get to enjoy our abilities if we are closed for love?

What do I mean by that? Well, everyone needs love. We all feel lonely now and then. So we think we need love and go around our daily chores thinking we will bump into the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Occasionally we meet people we think we like and get along. We think, "wow! He or she seems to be exactly the one I am looking for" etc.

Time goes by and we get to know that person who seem to fit our bill of qualities we want in a lover / mate. We get to a point where we need to make conclusive decisions regarding the relationship. We need to decide whether to get more closer to this person and get him or her committed to you either as an exclusive boyfriend or girlfriend or move in or get engaged etc.

The moment arrives when you are put on the spot to make a decision to get committed to the decision to move forward to the next step. You panic. You come up with all kinds of excuses not go to the next step. You wonder why you can't seem to make the decision to go forward. You can't seem to put the finger on why this is the case. On a deeper level, we are sometimes confused about love. This can be due to several reasons. Some are as follows;

Here are some of the reasons because of which we may not be open to love;

1) Painful Past Experiences - We want love but we don't want to be too close to someone because of our past painful experiences associated with having a loving relationship. We associate love with painful experience because that's what happened in the past. We think that what happened in the past is going to happen in the future. We think that past equals the future.

2) Lose of Independence

On some level we believe that opening the door for love means loss of our own independence. We think that by letting the other person into our lives we might lose our own way of life. We might be forced to do certain things or our way of life may have to be changed etc

3) Lack Of Time - We believe that our times through the day have to be shared with the other person, we might be required to communicate with the other person on a regular basis even if we don't feel like it. We think that they might take up our daily time especially if we are already at a crunch for time to do what we need to do in our existing life.

4) Fear Of Commitment

We think that by committing to the love from this one person we might be committed to that person for life and it might appear final for our decision on our lover for life. Although the "Fear Of Commitment" is can be due to several factors, simply put this may also influence whether we are open to love coming into our life as well.

5) Busy Lifestyle

Our lifestyle whether it is existing work related, habit related or our friendship network related may not lend itself to a new person coming into our life. We think that by letting love into our life we have to change our lifestyle dramatically which we might regret later on, so we decide not to be open to love

6) Financial Reasons

We somehow believe that having new love into our life, we might be required to spend more money on ourselves whether to make us look good by dressing better or spend more money on the other person in terms of gifts, dinner or other activities which may cost money. We think the new love may interfere with our work and time, which we think can be spent on making our finances better

7) Our Need To Remain Who We Are

Most of us have moments when we shy from change. We all want to remain true to who we are. We don't want to change our habits for anyone, especially if our habits and values are making us happy as a person. We think that letting love into our life, the other person may make us change who we are. So we remain closed to new love or not letting our existing love come closer to us. We think that for the moment we feel better because nothing will change the status quo of who we are if we do not let love into our life.

8) Fear Of Intimacy

We all have our inherent fear for certain things in our life. This may vary from fear of dark places, fear of flying to fear of getting closer to someone emotionally or even physically at intimate moments. When we are afraid of being intimate with another person in a romantic way, the fear itself prevents us from being open to love

9) Lack of Self Esteem

Our sense of personal worth or self-esteem will have a dramatic impact on how sociable we are. How we behave in social situations with other people whether it is with the member of the same sex or the opposite sex. You will find that lower the self-esteem, lower the chances of us being "open to love". On some level our self worth and our perception of what / whom we deserve prevents us from being open to new and exciting love coming into our life

10) Perfectionist Mentality

How many of us wait for the perfect moment to do certain things? We think that if we do it in a hurry we might mess it up and AVOID doing those things?

Solution? We need to explore each of the above factors and think through why we are not open to. The above reasons list can differ from one person to another as each one of us are from varying cultural, family, belief systems, value systems and other social conditioning. So the above can vary from one factor being applicable to you to more than one or even all of them being applicable to you. Only you can self explore which ones ring a bell when you look deeper inside yourself to find ways to overcome the above issues and be open to love.

Copyright 2006 Joshua Danicio