Joe names three categories for how we push away the love we most want. We chase it — getting needy, looking for praise, demanding time and attention — which others instinctively recoil from. We avoid it — feeling that if we let love in we’ll lose control, lose ourselves, be dominated or smothered, so we walk away or resist. Or we fight it — defending ourselves in a way that feels internally like self-protection but lands on the other person as a battle.
“We’re either avoiding it, we’re either chasing it, or we’re defending/fighting.”
Each pattern traces to a childhood version of love. The avoidant was loved to the point of losing their own identity. The fighter learned that love always came with a fight. Joe’s example is a father in a power struggle with his eight-year-old: he might win compliance or provoke rebellion, but he won’t get love. Even the fighter is fighting to be seen and loved — and getting neither. Whichever shape it takes, the move is the same: wanting love and repelling it in the same gesture.
“What you’re fighting for is to be seen, to be loved. And you’re not getting seen, and you’re not getting loved. But you’re also pushing away the love.”
Related Concepts
- Chasing love signals that you don’t deserve it
- Jealousy is a bid for love that pushes love away
- We fool ourselves by blaming the wrong person or circumstance
- Draw a boundary to get love without the thing it was married to
- Negative self-talk reveals how love was wired in childhood