122: What Does It Mean if I Fail at Love?
In this episode, I delve into a listener's heartfelt question – what does it mean if I fail at love? This listener is feels like they are getting a second chance at love with an ex, and finds themselves feeling fear arise. They have been in love before and are worried they will “mess up” this new relationship. Through the episode, we explore the intricacies of love, vulnerability, and self-worth, while also emphasizing the importance of self-love and being kind to oneself on the journey to finding meaningful connections. For anyone embarking on a second chance for love, this episode is here to reassure you that you are worthy of love.
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Timestamps ⏱️
Introduction: 0:05
Listener Question: 1:53
Outro: 22:31
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice with Amanda Durocher. Hi there, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher, and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers. I believe you have all the answers. You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you for joining me for today's episode.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:21]:
Today, I'm answering a question asked by a listener. That is what does it mean if I fail at love again? This listener is getting what they view as a second chance at love. They're rekindling a romance with an ex partner, and they are wondering what it would mean if this relationship failed. They have been in many relationships before, and none of them have been quote, unquote successful. So this listener is finding that they have a lot of fear arising. They are afraid of love, and for them, the fear is really the fear of failing at love. And I think this is a great question. I think many of us can relate to this question.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:55]:
What does it mean if we fail at love? I'm I'm gonna give you a spoiler alert here. I don't think we can fail at love, but we will talk about that throughout today's question. And my intention for this episode is to help you to bring awareness to your fears and to the stories you're telling yourself regarding love, to reassure you that you cannot fail at love, and to help you to bring compassion to yourself and to this new relationship, and to remind you that as always, you are worthy of love and all of us are worthy of love. So before we jump in today's listener question, I wanted to let you know that today's episode show notes will be at newviewadvice.com/120two. Any resources I mentioned will be there. And, also, you can visit my website after this episode, newvideoadvice.com, for free resources such as journal prompts, meditations. I have another series called Reflections. I have poems on there.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:39]:
I have blog posts. There are many of things on newtoadvice.com. So if you are looking for more help along your healing journey, check that out after this episode. And with that, let's jump on into talking about love. Dear Amanda, I listened to your episode Why Am I Scared of Love, and it really hit home. I was wondering if you could help me with my specific situation. Here's the story. I met someone over two years ago, and we've been on and off ever since.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:07]:
This is someone I have not been able to get off my mind. I've dated other people since meeting this person, but we always find a way back together. Each time we date, it's never long term. Usually, one of us isn't looking for anything serious at the time, and we always say it'll be a one time thing. But over the years, my feelings have grown. If I'm honest, I'm in love with this person. And as you talked about in your episode, that terrifies me. Recently, we've both decided to give it a real try and to be exclusive.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:32]:
We've never done this before. I'm more scared than ever. The fear arising for me is this. I've dated many people in the past, I've been in love, and it's never worked out for me. I know none of these people were meant for me. I truly believe that. But I'm really afraid of trying again. I was close to marriage once, and the end of that relationship really left me broken.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:49]:
I thought I had moved past that, but recently, I find myself fearing, what if this doesn't work out? I know I won't be rejected because this person is also into me. I know that. But there is this fear. I'm afraid of it not working out. I feel like I'm being given a second chance at love, but so scared of messing it up. What does it mean if I fail at love again? Thank you so much for this question. This is a real honest question, so I wanna thank you for your vulnerability and for writing in because you are not alone. You are not the only one who fears failing at love.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:18]:
And I want to reassure you that all your feelings are valid while also telling you that I don't believe you can fail at love. I really, really don't. And I know people are like, but but but no. If you really put your heart out there, I don't believe you can fail at love. Does that mean every relationship works? No. But does that mean you failed at love? No. You didn't fail at love. Love is a mysterious thing.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:43]:
It's this mysterious force that we cannot control. I think so many times who we love is illogical to some extent. Yes. There are reasons, and, yes, we're attracted to people who can help us heal childhood wounds, and, yes, we have people we're attracted to, people we're not. Yes. Yes. Yes. But there's also something illogical about love, and we can try and not get our way into love.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:07]:
Or sometimes we can just accept that love is there to show us something. Love is our greatest teacher. I always talk about how relationships are our greatest teacher, but that's because love so often comes into play. We love our friends. We love our family. We love the people who we're in relationships with. We love our children. Love is the teacher.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:27]:
And so every time that you have opened your heart and embarked on the journey of love, you have not failed. You have been vulnerable, and that is a win in my book. And I want to help you to reframe your mindset around failing at love. Because when we think we fail at something, that can immobilize us. It can make us freeze. It can make us go into inaction because it is very, very scary to fail, especially if we have stories around failure. And this is where I want to invite you as my first piece of advice to begin bringing awareness around this question you asked. What does it mean to fail at love? So we want to, with this question, not just look at our beliefs around love, but what are your beliefs around failure? Are you a perfectionist? Are you somebody who feels like they have to be successful at everything? Are you somebody who's maybe successful in a bunch of other areas of your life, but this is the one area that you can't quite get right, so you feel like a failure at it? You know, in my life, I actually was looking at it recently, this feeling of failure, and how in my childhood, failure was not okay.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:33]:
If I didn't do something right or if I messed up or if I made a mistake, I often got punished for that mistake or yelled at or disciplined or scolded. And I wasn't allowed to make mistakes, but mistakes are where we learn. They're where we grow. They're where we meet ourselves in a new way. It makes me think of I was watching Batman last night. I think I talk about this Batman trilogy all the time. I'm obsessed with Christopher Nolan's work, by the way. I think Christopher Nolan and I view the world in a very similar way, so I'm just really into his movies.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:05]:
So I apologize for all my Christopher Nolan references. But in Batman Begins, there's flashbacks to Batman, Bruce Wayne's childhood. And his dad says to him, this quote is used multiple times throughout the movie, and the line is, Bruce, why do we fall? Why do we fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up. And, oof, what a beautiful way to view failure. And I share this because I think this can be applied to failure. Why do we fail? So we can pick ourselves back up. Because that's what failure feels like. It feels like we fell.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:37]:
And so I want you to begin looking at your stories of failure and how maybe your beliefs around failure in another area of your life are impacting your ability to love. Because as I mentioned, I don't think we can fail at love. Does every relationship work out? No. But do we have to call that a failure? No. Did you learn something in those past relationships? Did you learn about love? Did you learn about what it was like to be in a partnership? Did you learn about what you were looking for? Did you learn about what you weren't looking for? Did you learn about how to be with somebody else? Did you learn about how to treat somebody else? Did you learn how you didn't wanna be treated? There are so many lessons to be taken from relationships, and so often, it is relationships that don't work out that teach us so much. Relationships that do work out teach us a ton too, but relationships in general are great teachers. And anytime we can learn, I would say that's not a failure. So I understand why you're afraid of this not working out because my guess is you have beliefs around failure, but, also, heartbreak is painful.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:35]:
That this relationship you enter doesn't work out, it will be painful. That I will be truthful with. Heartbreak hurts. In my mind, it can hurt more than physical pain because it can last longer, Especially, if we don't allow ourselves the full healing, we don't give ourselves that full grieving process. It can leave a lasting scar on our hearts, and that can be painful. So it makes sense that you fear love and you fear this relationship ending. So with that, the third place I want you to bring awareness is these past relationships and what beliefs you created around love. And, again, maybe in these past relationships, it wasn't okay to fail.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:10]:
Or maybe when these relationships ended, someone blamed you and said it was all your fault that the relationship didn't work out. If you weren't this way, this would've worked out. I'm gonna I'm gonna argue that one, that I think most of the time when relationships don't work out, it's two people not working out for whatever reasons. But relationships take two to tango. I don't think it's ever one person's fault. And, yes, there are abusive relationships. But if you're writing in this question, my guess is you weren't abusing somebody in your last relationship. So that's why here for you, I wanna stress that relationships are two people because oftentimes, very empathetic people, especially, and a lot of people here are very empathetic.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:47]:
I know that because I'm very empathetic as well, so my audience tends to be. But with that, very empathetic people can tend to take on too much responsibility. And I'm wondering here if you've taken on too much blame and responsibility for your past relationships. We don't have to take on the full blame and responsibility for the failure of a relationship. But maybe it's not all our fault. And maybe the relationship didn't work out because as we talked about in, I think, that episode you referenced, Why Am I Scared of Love, episode one twenty, or it could have been another episode I recorded recently. I apologize that I can't remember what I say when. But what I said in one of my recent episodes is people come into our life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:25]:
Thank you to my therapist for this saying. But I share this with you because these relationships you were in were there for a reason or a season, and we don't have to judge that. Because asking yourself is what does it mean if I fail at love is judging yourself. You are already judging yourself for something that hasn't happened yet. Isn't that crazy that we do that? You are already asking yourself that question, and nothing has happened yet. You have created a fear that you don't need to have. But we all do it. We do it all the time.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:55]:
I worry all the time about everything. So it's very human, but I want to mention that because the truth is this relationship could work out. And the truth is if it does work out and you're with this person forever, you're gonna have a lot of stuff come up. It won't be this perfect, shiny thing. It will likely be beautiful but messy, and that's okay. But I share that because it's not like this black or white thing. I feel like your question is making it black or white, that you could fail at love or you could succeed at love. And I just invite you to take the pressure off yourself because I don't think it works like that.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:29]:
I don't think love is success or failure. I think love is nuance. Love is love. It's brave every time we venture into the arena of love. So be kind to yourself because I think you may have created beliefs around love based off of your past relationships. But also when it comes to matters of the heart, so often it goes back to a childhood wound and very often a parental wound. So feeling unloved by a mother or a father or maybe with this question with the failure, it's a fear of love being taken away based off of failure, which could go back to a parental wound. And so be kind to yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:05]:
When love is at play, it really encompasses all of us. So I think that inner child is always involved. So is present day us, and so is our wise self in the future. It's like all of us, all the ages, past, present, and future come together with love. What makes it amazing, fascinating, beautiful, terrifying, scary, so be kind to yourself. I think that, as I mentioned, it's courageous to step out into the arena of love. And very often when things require courage, they trigger fear. So your fears are all valid around love, and you're worthy of love.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:41]:
Remind yourself that because when we have, quote, unquote, failed at love or had relationships that didn't work out, we can create beliefs around our worthiness or our enoughness around who we are. And I want to reassure you here that these relationships that didn't work out and childhood wounds and how maybe you were brought up by your parents doesn't define your lovability. The only person who gets to define how lovable you are is you, and that's why, on this podcast, we talk about learning to love ourselves. Because the truth is, at the end of the day, you can only love somebody as much as you love yourself. It humbles me time and time again how true that statement is, that the more I love myself, the more I'm able to love other people in my life. And I think it's really interesting with your question because you're talking about a second chance at love. So you've probably changed over the last two years, and you probably love yourself more. You're writing into this podcast, meaning that you do inner work.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:31]:
You heal. You work on yourself. I'm sure you've changed over the past two years. So reassure yourself that too, that you're not the same person you were in these past relationships. You're not the same person you were when you originally met this person. You're a new person. Allow yourself to be that new person. Sometimes I think when we heal, we forget to allow ourselves the healing.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:50]:
We forget that now that we've had this healing or now that we see the world differently, we get to show up differently. We get to be different, and that's okay. And that's beautiful. That's why we heal. We get to show up in the world in a new way. I want to assure you to be kind to yourself and also be kind to this person you're entering a relationship with. Because my guess is this person is likely having their own fears and insecurities too because relationships tend to trigger fear and insecurity. And sometimes at the beginning, we get to enjoy a honeymoon phase and there's no fear, but then eventually fear arises.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:23]:
Triggers arise. And I say that because remember that you're likely not alone in how you're feeling. And so often when we are entering relationships or even when we've been in relationships for a long time, we fear opening up about our fears to the person who is triggering these fears, the person who we're afraid of losing. But the truth is so often that person has their own fears. And it's through opening up to that person about these fears that we actually create deeper intimacy with one another, which is what we're all searching for. We're all searching for intimacy. We're all searching for connection. So I think something you could do here is tell this person who you're entering a relationship with the fears you're having.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:01]:
Be honest. Be vulnerable. The best relationships are built off that, are built off of honesty and vulnerability. Those are the relationships that people grow together because you can't grow together without being vulnerable. Right? When we grow and we heal, we're being vulnerable with ourselves. It's the same in relationships. And so I invite you to remember that the person who you're entering a relationship with has their own stories they're telling themselves to and that they're not perfect and you are not perfect. And remind yourself that you can't mess this up.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:32]:
I think that's a really harsh way to view this. I don't think you can mess this up. I don't think that person can mess this up. I don't think that's how love works. That's why I think love is a bit illogical, and it's a bit out of our control. It's this mysterious force. And when it doesn't work out, it doesn't mean you did something to mess it up. Even if somebody says you did this and this is why it ended, I'm not sure that's entirely why relationships end.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:56]:
As I mentioned, people come into our life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, and you learn from it. When we make mistakes or we have a growing pain within a relationship and maybe it causes that relationship to end, doesn't mean we messed it up. I just invite you to be kinder with yourself with the wordings and to reframe some of the ways you talk to yourself about love because I think that will help you with this fear coming up and how it feels terrifying is reassuring yourself that there's nothing wrong with you if this relationship doesn't work out. Because at the core, my guess is you may be telling yourself a story about being wrong and making yourself wrong. You're afraid of messing it up. You felt broken at the end of another relationship, and now you're afraid of failure. Those are all ways we make ourselves wrong for doing something. And you're not wrong for wanting to be loved.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:43]:
You're not wrong for venturing into the arena of love. You're not wrong if your relationship doesn't work out, and you're not wrong for how you're feeling. You are a human having a very human experience, and love can feel very all consuming, overwhelming, beautiful, scary, as we've talked about. I invite you to just be kinder to yourself and to reassure yourself there's nothing wrong with you. You are worthy of love. You are enough just as you are. Spoiler alert, because you're afraid of failure. You don't have to be perfect to be in love.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:13]:
You're never gonna be perfect. So if you think that you're gonna reach a version of yourself where you will be so perfect you can't mess it up or fail. I'm gonna tell you now that I don't think you're ever gonna reach that version of yourself because nobody's perfect. You're never gonna reach a perfect standard. And I think when we fear failure, we so often are perfectionists or we want things to look or be a certain way or meet our expectations. And that's why it's so important to learn to just be present with right now and to be kind to yourself. It sounds so easy. It's not.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:48]:
It's not easy to be present or be kind to ourselves because we are our own biggest critics. We are harshest on ourselves, and people who are hard on others are even harder on themselves. So if you know somebody who's really critical, just know that they really are harder on themselves. But, really, we are our own biggest critics, and that is why you being kind to yourself isn't fluffy or froofy. It's revolutionary. Because the kinder you are to you, the kinder you're gonna be to other people, and the kinder you're gonna be to this person you're in a relationship with, beautiful. Because I know you want to be kind to this person. You love this person.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:20]:
You love being with this person. But when we're hard on ourselves, we so often take it out on our partners and in our relationships and on one another. I find it fascinating that so often in life, we're more kind to strangers than we are to our loved ones because our loved ones are, quote, unquote, easier for us to take out our feelings on. On. There's a part of us that knows they'll be there for us or we've done it before, so there's this pattern. That shouldn't be the case. We should be kind to everybody, but we should show love the most to the people we love the most. But that starts with you loving you.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:51]:
So how do we do this? How do we love ourselves? Every episode comes back to self compassion and self love. Spoiler alert if you're new to this podcast. How do we love ourselves? There's a million different ways. Everybody learns to love themselves differently. My path is self compassion. The kinder I am to myself, the more I show myself, I love myself. How do we do that? We learn to be with ourselves and our fears. I invite you to meditate.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:10]:
I invite you to journal. I invite you to be quiet with yourself in nature. No cell phone. But self love is a practice, and what this means is you can't read one book about self love and all of a sudden love yourself. It's every day. It's the nitty gritty showing up day by day, loving yourself, and by loving yourself and loving the people in your life. And when they trigger you and they trigger your fears such as your fear of failure, knowing that one, that fear is your fear. It's not about them.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:36]:
So if in the future, this partner of yours says something and it triggers failure within you, know that likely for you, this failure isn't connected to that relationship. It goes much deeper because you're talking about that fear of failure now. So if it comes up later, remember that Amanda said, that means the fear goes deeper. If you see this fear pop up again and again in relationships, it means it goes deeper. It's a pattern. It's a layer, and that's okay. And with this fear of failure, with this fear of love, you mentioned being in a relationship where you thought you had, quote unquote, gotten over it and another fear is popping up. There's nothing wrong with that when more layers and more healing needs to happen.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:09]:
Again, be kind to yourself. I feel like a broken record at this point where I just keep saying, be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. But I think that from your question, it really sounds like you're ready for this new relationship. I believe you deserve this second chance at love. I'm excited for you and this person to give it a shot. You'll never know if you don't do it. So often, we live in inaction, and it's action that shows us something.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:31]:
You'll never know how this relationship will end if you never start it. We so often get so afraid we just don't start things or we don't jump into love or we don't embrace a new relationship or we don't start that new project or we don't put ourselves out there in a new way because we allow the fear to stop us. If you can take anything from this episode, it would be don't allow the fears to stop you. Be kind to yourself and know that you, my love, are worthy of love. You deserve all the love in the world. There is nothing you could do that could make it that you don't deserve love. Remind yourself that. Remind yourself how much you love yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:04]:
So the last thing I'm gonna say before I wrap up this question is that I don't know why some of us meet the love of our life in high school, and why some of us don't. And some of us meet the love of our life at age 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. I don't know why that is. But what I do know is that we're each on our own individual journeys, and it's important not to compare your journey to other people's journeys. So when you are calling yourself a failure, I invite you to ask yourself if you're comparing it to other people's relationships. Because I'm gonna tell you two things. One, you cannot compare your journey to anybody else's journey. You do not know their life.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:43]:
Two, you do not know the inside of relationships. So somebody who may look like they have a really happy relationship may not have such a happy relationship, or somebody who you may judge as having a not great relationship could have a fantastic relationship. You don't really know what's going on behind closed doors, so it's important you don't compare yourself to other relationships. Because also, there's different love languages, there's different things people are looking for, there are things that work for some people that don't work for others. It's not a comparison game. So I invite you to, again, wipe your slate clean and just know that today, you are this version of yourself. You've never been this version of yourself before because you're venturing into new water and you've never done that before. Somebody else's path does not impact your path.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:25]:
This is very similar to healing from trauma. I don't know why some people experience trauma and other people's don't. I don't know why some people go to hell and it's not their fault and other people don't have to deal with that. I don't know why that is. But it's important that we don't compare our journeys to one another because nobody knows what you've been through. Nobody knows the lessons you've learned, and nobody knows what it's like to be you but you. And it's important for you to remind yourself that rather than judging and comparing yourself to those around you and being like, oh my gosh. I should be married at this age.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:56]:
That's not true. Plenty of people aren't married. Plenty of people probably get divorced at whatever age you are because people get divorced at every age. People start dating at every age. People meet each other, fall out of love, fall back in love at every age. So be kind to yourself, love yourself, and do not compare your journey to other people's journeys. And I know love is something you desire. You wouldn't have ridden this question if you didn't.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:20]:
And you do deserve it, and you will find the person that you are looking for and the family you are searching for. Because I believe with romantic love, so often we're searching to expand our families. So with that, thank you so much for this question. I hope something in this was helpful, and I am sending you so much love. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of Nuvia Advice. As always, I am so grateful to be able to have these conversations each week. And if you haven't already, I invite you to follow the podcast where we listen to NewView Advice so that you never miss an episode. I release a new episode every Wednesday.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:53]:
Thank Thank you again for joining me for another episode of NewView Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Send you all my love. See you next time.
