The arrival of love should ostensibly always be a matter of celebration.
Let's imagine that finally, after years of waiting, along comes what might be called a nice person.
They're mature, they apologise for their flaws.
They listen, they ask questions, they take an interest, they're generous.
So a new couple go on a number of holidays, maybe to Pisa first, then a weekend in Wales, then a trip to Nottingham.
Introductions are made to best friends, from the training course, to an aunt, to a brother-in-law.
There's laughter, some innovative sex, deep conversations and a sense at last of having come home.
But in the background of one of the two parties, the lover who is fearful of love, there will also be a rising discomfort.
For a time, this is managed through strategic lowerings of the temperature.
Let's say there's an argument on the steps of the museum which ruins one afternoon.
Then there's a mysterious bout of so-called illness which puts pay to a few dinners.
Then there's an urgent need to see a friend which shatters the intimacy of the third weekend.
Then there's a pressing need to attend a course or fix a shelf.
Subtle attempts to ensure that love cannot deepen, that dependence is stymied, that a home is carefully dismantled at the same time as it seems to be being put up.
Let's make an analogy.
A person is taken prisoner early in their life, a time of terrible war.
In a prison camp, there's barely any food.
The young prisoner grows up having to adjust to an extreme calorie-controlled diet.
There's little nourishment and the stomach shrinks to accommodate what's on offer.
Then suddenly, there is peace.
The prison gates are open.
It's liberation.
There's joy and celebration.
A banquet is laid on.
There are chocolate tarts, creamy cheeses, lush fruits, dried meats, but the banquet is wholly indigestible to the prisoners.
The goodness cannot be metabolised.
Something comparable will have happened to the lover who cannot love.
They too will have been neglected by a mother who was mentally unwell or a father who was filled with rage and then later ran off or married a friend.
The lover has never been fed.
The lover's emotional stomach has shrunk.
They dream of banquets.
The deprived always do, but they will retch at the sight.
Gradually, a conclusion forms in the emotionally undernourished partner's mind.
They must get out.
Very fast.
Their lover is not, despite appearances, very nice at all.
They're controlling.
They don't have their best interests at heart.
They aren't actually interested in listening to them.
These accusations bear the imprint of their opposites.
They can be read as desperate, confused pleas on the part of the unwell lover's unconscious mind.
What on earth is one meant to do with kindness?
What in heaven's name is one meant to do with trust?
How can one handle goodness?
These are desirable but entirely alien properties.
And they kick off an acute, unconscious fear of loss.
What would happen if the lover were to be snatched away?
How could one survive disappearance now?
It would quite literally kill one.
Better then, to instigate loss oneself than see it unfold hideously outside of one's volition.
I must fire rather than be fired.
I must deny the legitimacy of love to prevent dependence growing.
The lover who is terrified of love sets about priming the explosives.
An affair, a grave rupture of trust, a disappearance, a cancelled holiday, silence online.
And they're ready with an answer were they to be questioned by the incensed, terrified partner.
It's your fault.
You're complaining about nothing.
You've got a bad temper.
You don't listen to my needs.
And they're off.
In a classic so-called avoidant discard, the lover can blow up a relationship in a matter of days, sometimes hours.
Social media profiles are changed instantly.
The lover who's afraid of love may be back on the dating scene in minutes.
The now ex is erased from history, airbrushed out like a Soviet era leader.
The love never happened.
The lover was too intense.
It would never have worked.
They were controlling.
It takes a very steady mind indeed not to fracture at this point when one's on the receiving end of this.
One's being told to go away on the grounds of something one's not done by someone one adores, who's denying that they're up to anything.
We need to remember some core truths.
We've been discarded because love is terrifying to those who were not loved as children.
We have been thrown away not because we were horrible, but because we were not horrible enough.
We've been punished for caring for people who do not, in their core, in any way feel worthy of care.
