The 4 indirect obstacles to love
75. The 4 indirect obstacles to love
You are listening to episode 75, the four indirect obstacles to love. Normally, in my episodes, I talk a lot about the impact of your past, of your love patterns on your love life. If you are discovering my podcast now, I recommend listening to episode 3 on love patterns or else episode 14 to 18 on Lise Bourbeau’s five wounds.
In this episode I am starting a new series where I wanted to talk to you about the indirect obstacles to love that are not necessarily related to your past, but more about the state you are in, the circumstances you are in. So in this episode, I am going to explain how these indirect obstacles have an impact on your love life, as I observe it with more than 600 people accompanied, and a bit the different scenarios.
❤️ Watch my webinar on how to finally be happy in love!
For you
FREE Webinar "HOW TO FREE OURSELVES FROM THE PATTERNS THAT PREVENT US FROM BEING HAPPY IN LOVE?"
Subscribe now to my newsletter and receive the replay of the webinar how a wound from the past is created ?
* Mandatory fields
If you register for this webinar, you will be subscribed to my newsletter and you will be able to receive offers from me. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please read my
privacy policy (german only), to see how I process the data.
The four indirect obstacles to love
The four obstacles I am going to talk about are self-confidence, acceptance of your body, lack of time and work-life balance. I have already talked about the obstacle that is for me indirect but nevertheless the most important one, self-love, in two podcast episodes the episode 27 where I describe how self-love represents a relational standard and episode 28 where I give you a few more solutions to cultivate more.
So in this episode, I am going to explain how these indirect obstacles have an impact on your love life and a bit the different scenarios. And starting from episodes 76 to 79, we will talk more about solutions. So I want to invite a few experts in each of these areas to see how you can work on these indirect obstacles to love.
Self-confidence
The first obstacle I would like to talk about is self-confidence. It is an obstacle that often seems obvious. It is often something we say “I lack self-confidence” so I find it hard to meet partners etc.
I wanted to list all the consequences this obstacle can have in love, because we often underestimate all its consequences.
- The first is obvious, it will block you from going toward partners you really like. You might play it safe and just wait for the partners who come to you.
- The second point is that it will somewhat prevent you from being authentic or from really showing who you are and ultimately take away the other’s opportunity to get to know you.
- Lack of self-confidence will often put you in doubt. Is what you are doing right? Is your judgment right? Is your opinion right? And so it will be difficult for you to enter into negotiation with the other, to enter into discussion with the other, especially in moments when you disagree.
- If you will, this lack of self-confidence will add a layer of difficulty to the relationship.
- It may also block you from daring. It may force you to stay a bit more in your comfort zone because you will have this fear of the consequences of your actions. It will be difficult to make mistakes or to accept making them.
- When things go badly in the couple, it can also have an impact on your confidence in your couple’s ability to turn the tide. So for example to get through a crisis or resolve a difficulty you have.
- It can potentially also have an impact on the optimism you have for your relationship.
- And finally it can create a kind of inner distance from the other, because you are never really totally yourself.
What I am saying here is not that you must have 100 % self-confidence to be able to be in a couple. I am trying more to make you aware of how this lack of self-confidence can have an impact on your couple life. Of course the goal is not to be perfect in a couple. The couple can help you partially heal this lack of self-confidence, especially if the other sees things in you that you do not see yourself or if the other is confident, they can also help you move forward, get past this comfort zone. And it is the same for all the other obstacles.
Body acceptance
The second obstacle is body acceptance. So if you find it hard to love your body, to find yourself handsome or beautiful, if you have complexes, whether about your weight, acne, the shape of your face, your height or if you have a disability in your body, this difficulty accepting your body can have quite a lot of impact on your love life.
- It can impact the confidence you have in your ability to please someone, in your ability to seduce others.
- It can impact your choice of partner, that is, you will not choose the partners you really like, but more those who come to you.
- It can also shape the way you behave with the other and make you over-adapt, that is, you accept more things because you think you do not really have opportunities to find someone else.
- It can impact how easy or difficult it is for you to separate for exactly the same reason. Because you think that with this complex, it is hard to find another partner.
- It can impact the security in your couple, that is, you may link the duration of your couple or the security of the couple, or the fact that the other wants to stay with you directly to your complex. So if I give you an example, if you think your weight is really decisive for keeping someone, well you may think that if you gain a bit too much weight, the other will leave you.
- And so this will generate an enormous amount of insecurity in you, an enormous need to be in control of your complex, so it can really go very far.
- It can also lead to situations of disrespect, that is, you accept that the other speaks badly to you or makes remarks to you because you speak badly to yourself. I often say the other is the mirror of oneself, so the less tolerant you are toward your body, the less tolerant the person in front of you will quickly be and all that.
- A difficulty accepting your body can also have a big impact on sexuality, on being comfortable sexually.
You see that all of this and the body in particular is an enormous obstacle. Because as long as you do not sufficiently accept your body, again we are not talking about perfection, it will add one more layer of difficulty to the relationship.
Lack of time
The third obstacle is lack of time. Time is a resource we cannot recover, it is a perishable resource.
And I always say meeting someone is also a question of statistics. If you estimate that between 5 and 10 % of the people you meet are compatible with you, that concretely means you need to meet between 90 and 95 people to find between five and ten people who are compatible with you. And to manage to meet that number of people, it requires you to invest time. It is rare to meet your partner sitting on your sofa.
And the second thing is that you invest time in dating without yet having the result. So it is a bit of time that you invest for the future and that ultimately requires you to give up other things.
I classify lack of time in two categories :
- There are time constraints. For example you have a demanding job, you have to do training, you are a single mom or single dad, so you have the majority custody of your child or children. You may have to take care of a dependent person, it could be your parents and grandparents, sick people etc….
- You have the lack of time for leisure or things that are rather a personal choice. So for example you can have a super full social life, filled with associations, sports, etc. You can be passionate about travel, so travel all the time. You can launch into entrepreneurship, into your dream job. In fact, it is an obstacle that in itself does not always seem negative, especially if you have a full social life, if you travel, well you can say well yes, I am enjoying my life, I do not depend on a potential partner, they will come when they come. And in fact that is a false idea. Because yes, you can meet people within your social life, within your travels.But are you investing your energy in finding a partner in those activities? And that is not always the case.
Often what I notice in the people I accompany is that you let life carry you, you enjoy life, so to speak, then after a few years, you say Oh my god, but I want to start a family and then I have nobody. So this is really quite an important obstacle and it has several impacts on how you look for a partner.
- First, you do not invest enough time to look for a partner or to get to know new people. You continue with your circle that you already know, with the activities you already know.
- Or else you also invest time, but perhaps without really going all in or it will not be regular enough. So you will have an intensive period, then afterwards you will stop.
- Or you will be in a hurry, that is, you will want things to happen fast, it will impact your mindset because it ultimately requires you to give up things that could potentially bring you pleasure.
- You can be quite rushed in the process, that is, you will quickly need to know if it is the right person. You will quickly need to choose and you will quickly need the relationship to move forward. So it is a bit this spirit of haste. And here the problem this often creates is that you may botch your choice, not really make a choice and so in the end delay even more the process of finding the person who truly suits you.
- And finally, you may make choices that are strategically not good for you. I am talking here notably about cases with time constraints, so a demanding job, or you have children or dependents. In those cases it is mathematically difficult for you to invest a lot of time in the search for partners, and so it is even more important to make conscious and strategic choices that will bring you the best results relative to the time you can invest. And that can allow you to really tip the balance.
Work-life balance
The last obstacle, I called it work-life balance, but we could also name it mental load or pre-burnout or burnout depending on the extent of the imbalance. The difference from obstacle 3 is a question of choice, of how I invest my time, that is, you still manage. Obstacle four is when it overflows, when the person feels overwhelmed by everything they have to do. The load or responsibility they carry. It is not necessarily always a question of time, it can be just a question of mental load. You can be in a bit of a pre-burnout situation, you notice that your brain is not working as well as before, that you are a bit slower, that you cannot be as efficient anymore. And often, in fact, people in this situation want to do more, so it is rather the opposite effect. They want to add searching for a partner to their to-do list. Except they do not have this mental disposition, they do not have this time to welcome a partner into their life, even if they want to. So here, it would be almost the opposite effect of obstacle number three.
And often what happens is that if these people meet people and a relationship begins to start, it quickly becomes too much. They are quickly overwhelmed by the situation because the other partner wants to see them too much, or asks too much or wants to invest too much, or gives the impression that it is going too fast whereas what the other is asking is a minimum to start a relationship. Here the impact is that as long as your mental energy is not there, as long as you are overwhelmed, you do not have the capacity to welcome someone into your life. It ultimately requires you to stop a search for a certain amount of time before you have this capacity to welcome someone.
Because without this mental energy, without this balance, in fact, you do not really leave room for another partner in your life.
So there you go, these were the four obstacles that I want to develop in the following episodes. I would be interested to see whether one obstacle resonated more than another. Join me on Instagram.
Going further
If you want to explore the topic further and identify your own love patterns, you have my book S’ouvrir à l’amour available in all bookstores.
And finally, if you are ready to open up to love and transform your love life, I invite you to join my coaching program Opening up to love. You can take the Day of the Past option, a day of Somatic Deprogramming: a psycho-corporal practice to deprogram the automatic patterns of the nervous system and reprogram new relational reflexes.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Éditions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir à l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
Table des matières
