If you are as old as I am, you will remember the 80’s hit sung by the late, great Tina Turner. What’s love got to do with it?

It’s a song that many people can relate to. After all, who really needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

Love isn’t what you see in the movies. It’s also not lust or passion. Love is what love does. It’s one of the most wanted and yet most difficult emotions that we experience. For someone like myself with cPTSD, it’s the one emotion that we crave. We crave it because we see it as a form of acceptance. We want to be understood because we have so many attachment wounds that we seek acceptance in any way we can find it. Often times, that is unhealthy for us.

My whole life I wanted someone to know me, really know me. I have a lot of love to give but have always been unsure of how to give it because I never trusted the process. Accepting the love that I deserve was never something I thought I was allowed to do. That I didn’t deserve it. Of course, I now understand that this is all a normal aspect of having cPTSD and what it leads us to mistakenly believe to be true.

For the longest time I believed that love was supposed to hurt.

Trusting anyone has always been difficult for me. To trust meant I had to be vulnerable. To let someone in and expose myself and my past traumas. The fear of letting someone see all that and be accepted was something I struggled with. I have immense love for people but have a hard time feeling any love in return, and for the longest time I believed that love was supposed to hurt.

I was a very standoffish child because of my child abuse. Often my mom would try and comfort me, but I didn’t know how to accept that comfort. For me, an adult touching me in any way meant I was about to be abused. So, I was never a child that sought hugs or closeness. I would see my siblings interact with my parents, and even though deep down it’s what I wanted and needed, I couldn’t allow myself to accept. I often wonder if my mom felt that and if it pained her to see.

That standoffishness moved on into adulthood, and I often self-sabotaged as I believed I would be hurt and abandoned anyway, so I did everything I could to then be able to say, “I told you so.” Then I would beat myself up because of what I did and the guilt I would carry because of it. For the longest time, I believed I didn’t deserve someone’s love because the moment I’m something they don’t want, that love is gone. It’s a cycle that has taken me a long time to recognize and break.

Learning to love takes patience and time.

With time and a lot of therapy. I have learned that love is really knowing you feel understood, like you belong, special, and cherished, and that both of you want to nurture the connection and protect it. I no longer feel too afraid to feel too much or to be too much. It feels safe; it’s reassuring; it’s forgiving with boundaries.

I have also learned to stop looking for love in places that were unhelpful to my healing. To recognize that my trauma brain automatically goes to someone discarding me at the first hint of conflict and to not expect the worst possible outcome.

It’s taken a lot of patience and time, but I am now more convinced I deserve love, and to answer the question above, what’s love got to do with it? The answer is everything.

To love and be loved in return is the greatest gift we can both give and receive.