One of the paths out of confused love is taking contrary action—doing the opposite of what your conditioning tells you to do. Joe gives the example of a client whose mother would project fear and anxiety onto her (“What am I going to do? Will you hold some of my fear?”), and the client had learned that caretaking mom’s fear was love.
The contrary action might be saying “Wow, that’s a lot of fear, Mom” instead of absorbing it, or even playfully escalating: “Oh my gosh, what will happen if you get lost at the airport?” The flexibility to respond in a completely different way is what breaks the pattern and reveals that you’re not actually stuck.
Taking contrary action leads to heartbreak (you bump against the fear of losing love), and feeling the heartbreak expands your capacity for contrary action. Together with learning to love yourself unconditionally, these three practices create a self-reinforcing cycle that moves toward freedom.
“Finding that flexibility to act in a completely different way is part of allowing yourself to see that you’re unstuck and that you can actually be in love.”
Related Concepts
- We attract what we learned as love
- What we do to maintain love erodes our power
- Heartbreak is expansion, not breaking
- Confused love tells us when to close our hearts
- Surrender into love prevents self-betrayal