We can find more love as adults by healing painful childhood memories that prevent us from fully experiencing love.
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Life lessons—especially traumatic ones—heavily influence how we behave in life.
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Our view of love and life is colored by our past experiences. Those experiences determine how we interact with people—how we perceive their words, body language, and actions towards us. It affects how we see ourselves, relationships, and our ability to receive, give, and experience love.
Traumas that may negatively shape a man’s belief system about love include:
- If as a boy he experienced some form of abandonment, then he may develop trust issues as an adult.
- If he didn’t receive love and affection in his formative years, then he may have intimacy blocks later on.
- If a man was raised to always be self-composed—learning that “boys don’t cry”—then as an adult, he may have a hard time feeling and expressing his emotions.
Life lessons—especially traumatic ones—heavily influence how we behave in life. Your ability to see, feel, and give love is deeply connected to these experiences. Can you think of past situations that helped form your thoughts and beliefs about love, women, men, commitment, and so on?
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For example, did you witness your father treat your mother badly? Are you a child of divorce? Did you lose a loved one at an early age and feel like you never recovered from the loss? Can you see how these experiences may still affect your perception of life and love as an adult?
How would your adult life and outlook on love change if these memories were fully healed?
For new beliefs such as these to take root, a man must first heal the thing that made him believe the opposite—the painful and sometimes traumatic childhood memories.
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What if you could change your perspective on a memory—how you remember the event and what you learned from it—so that it no longer impacts your thoughts and actions in a negative way and instead it positively influences your ideas of life and love? When we heal past experiences where we were hurt, we make room in the present for a new narrative to take place—new ideas and beliefs—that can bring about more happiness, fulfillment, and love in our lives.
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Using our previous examples, here are new scenarios that can arise from healing the past:
- A man who was concerned about being abandoned—just as he was in childhood—can come to believe that he’ll never be alone, that he is supported, and that he deserves to be loved.
- A man who heals his childhood memories—key moments in life where he needed love and attention, but didn’t receive it therefore teaching him his unworthiness—can learn to value himself and believe that he is worthy of an intimate and passionate relationship.
- A man who was taught not to cry because it was an unacceptable—through healing the memories where he needed to express himself, but couldn’t—can learn to trust that showing emotion is natural and beneficial to his well-being and happiness.
For new beliefs such as these to take root, a man must first heal the thing that made him believe the opposite—the painful and sometimes traumatic childhood memories. Otherwise, it’s like repeating positive affirmations such as “I’m a strong and capable person,” while hearing the harsh words of a parent who called us “stupid” in the past in our mind. Our efforts would be useless. The positive affirmation will never be our reality because the limiting belief—that we’re stupid—is still being replayed in our mind.
Choose the method that resonates with you and heal your past and then adopt new positive beliefs that help you accept that you are deserving of love.
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A man can decide today that he wants to experience more love, but if he has a broken record playing in his mind—hurtful memories that remind him he’s unlovable, unworthy, and / or not good enough—then his effort will be in vain. The life-lessons he learned from those experiences—the beliefs that he’s been playing in his head for most of his life—is much stronger than the new declaration he wishes to adopt. By and large, this is the main reason positive affirmations or resolutions don’t work. A person’s unresolved past experiences will prevent him from creating a better life.
There are several ways to go about healing one’s past such as psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and Matrix Reimprinting. Choose the method that resonates with you and heal your past—the childhood memories that negatively taint your ideas about life and love—and then adopt new positive beliefs that help you accept that you are deserving of love.
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Photo: Getty Images
I see Jeanne’s article as one of universal, gender transcending application; the main point being that childhood experiences and programming account for the vast majority of adult mental health and emotional issues, and if someone is closed off to love and intimacy due to an internal block, it most often needs to be addressed through the healing of childhood memories/traumas. DJ’s point raises another topic altogether, which I find fascinating and beautifully complex. The trend of men pulling away from marriage can be viewed from a slightly different angle than that of their awakening to a new fear of divorce… Read more »
Andrew, I wanted to add on to the idea of Divine Masculinity and how that movement is powerful and much needed. Just as the Divine Feminine energy that is awakening in women drives them to heal their trauma—self, generational, and societal—it is imperative this same healing occur in men. Each sex restoring and reconciling—whatever they need to—to feel whole, loved, and in possession of their respective power. Women in their full power do not need to castrate men. Men in their full power do not need to dominate women. As men discover themselves and become happier, fulfilled, and balanced—in whatever… Read more »
“For example, did you witness your father treat your mother badly? Are you a child of divorce?” I think we need to expand the conversation out a bit more to “did you witness your mother treating your father badly”, or the extent that the father was emasculated in that divorce? Do we ask the specifics that would tend to influence the young male? The new roadblock that I’m seeing in my discussions with young men is a refusal to engage in intimacy and love not because of some inward self restrictive issues, but a genuine aversion to women, relationships, marriage.… Read more »
The rabbit hole is deep. There are many reasons why some men have issues around love and commitment. Childhood trauma just being one of them. You also bring up a good point—which I agree with—that boys who see their father castrated often by their mother may develop strained female relationships in the future. That you talk about hearing young men being averse to intimacy, love, and marriage is a problem indeed because men who can’t connect—or prefer to be disconnected—can lose part of their humanity. Their ability for compassion and empathy will surely suffer if they choose to forgo experiencing… Read more »