How to Fix Your Love Well and Feel Worthy of Love

Is it difficult for you to feel loved?

To feel truly and deeply loved?

Today we explore what happens to your relationship when it’s hard to love yourself.

• I’ll tell you about the deep hole of loneliness I carried from childhood well into adulthood
• How you can begin—or continue—to feel worthy of love
• And how worthiness—and what I call The Love Well—is the key ingredient to allowing you to receive the deep love you crave.

Want to listen to this blog? Click here for the podcast episode.

Many of us don’t feel worthy of love

I have a subset of clients who begin their conversation with me saying, “I’m sorry.”

In their first email when they reach out, they begin with, “I’m sorry to bother you…” Then, when they arrive at my office and say, “Sorry I’m late,” even though they aren’t late.

I recognize this apology. I remember feeling sorry I existed. Not sorry as in suicidal, but rather sorry I was taking up space. This sorrow of sorries created a cavernous hole in my belly I named The Lonely Feeling.

 

Where does The Lonely Feeling come from?

The Lonely Feeling was worst on Sundays when my father would drop me at my mother’s home after I spent the weekend with him. Or during Christmas holidays when I was at one or the other’s home, but missing the missing parent. Or, most especially, on my birthday when I wanted so badly to celebrate my life, but part of my life always felt empty. Like the chair at the table where someone belongs…but…isn’t.

I brought this lonely feeling into my marriage.

Sometimes it was difficult for me to recognize The Lonely Feeling and, I found some reason to blame David for the something that felt wrong inside me.

I wish I could go back to that young woman in her 20’s and 30’s who did so much blaming. I wish I could go back and hold her. Quietly hold her.

That’s what she needed. But she didn’t know how to receive the love inside a hug.

I had a leaky bottom on My Love Well.

 

What is a Love Well?

We all have a Love Well. It gets filled up by various people in our lives. We draw from this well to serve love to others in our lives. The profound thing about a Love Well is not how full it is or isn’t.

The most important thing about the Love Well is that it has a bottom. If there is no bottom, no matter how much love is poured in, none of it lands. It is an open abyss until a bottom is created.

I know of two ways to put a bottom on your love well. Your parents can build the bottom of your well for you, gifting you with a working well right from the start, or you can, when you are old enough, build your own bottom.

There are no boyfriends strong enough, no girlfriends patient enough to build the bottom on your Love Well. Having a baby doesn’t instantly create the bottom on a bottomless well. There is no career fulfilling enough to pour a foundation.

 

Everyone’s Love Well is different

If your parents gave you a ready-made-bottom-in-place well thank them. They may not be everything you want, but they gave you a gift. A starting place.

If you weren’t that lucky and your parents didn’t know how to pour that foundation into the days when you were young, don’t despair. It’s possible to go in for a remodel.

Everyone has to do some Love Well maintenance at some point in life, so the folks who got lucky in their choice of parents simply have a head start.

At some point, we all emancipate from our parents and the job of tending the child inside us becomes our own responsibility.

My daughter builds the bottom of her daughter’s Love Well

Recently our family went on a backpacking trip. The hike was challenging, and being in the woods, while glorious and rejuvenating, is also exhausting. So, we all came home tired, including my granddaughter and her dog.

My granddaughter got some snacks and did that thing that exhausted kids do, she got slap happy. She was running to each of us, then to her dog.

She’d high five each of us as she moved around the circle of a family who loved her, then she’d tap her dog, offering a high five he didn’t return. He’d growl a bit, to let us all know he was tired.

If we’d been more on the ball we would have said, “Hey Sweet Girl, your doggie doesn’t want to be touched.” But we didn’t know what was coming.

The next round of high fives got more ebullient. And that Sweet Girl plopped hard onto her dog, startling him. And he snapped at her.

He meant to just give a bark, but with his open mouth, his tooth grazed the top of her cheek and she screamed and ran to her mom.

Her mom was laying on the floor because her back hurt. And because she was too tired to sit up.

 

Abundant love builds the bottom of the well

My granddaughter threw herself on top of my daughter: belly to belly, and, while that little girl cried, her mother rubbed her back and held her saying, “That was scary. That surprised you.”

What touched me is that my daughter didn’t leap to see if she’d been hurt physically. She knew immediately that the wound was mostly emotional. This little girl’s mom just kept rubbing her back and naming her feelings.

“That scared you. You’re not used to your doggie doing that. You were just trying to hug him.”

As that sweet little babe started to calm down, and while she continued to get hugs and rubs, my daughter began to shift what she said. “Your doggie is tired too. He was surprised when you leaped on him. That’s how he cries to let you know what he needs.”

All the while, my daughter continued to lay on the floor exhausted.

There was no blame. No blame of anyone. There was only love.

What there was was abundant love. Love for my granddaughter. Love for the doggie. And, powerfully, love for herself. My daughter let herself continue to lay on the ground where she was stretching her back that was sore from her pack.

 

A Love Well is filled in these moments

As little tiny human beings we need this sort of abundant love. We don’t have words yet, so we’re just absorbing love through our pores and feelings.

Our Love Well is built when it is safe to feel those feelings. Safe and uncomplicated.

My granddaughter got to feel safe when she was frightened. She got to know that her love didn’t come at the expense of anyone else. It was pure and uncomplicated. Acceptance. Nurturance. Belonging.

Moments like this, when we are children, create the bottom on our Love Well. If you were lucky enough as a child to experience moments like this, you have a solid foundation.

When love is poured into you, it stays. It fills you up. You feel that safety, belonging, and acceptance.

I hope this was your experience.

But not all of us are so lucky.

 

Why does a Love Well leak?

My parents loved me so much. I received tons of hugs. Tons of words of encouragement and inclusion. But my parents struggled with each other.

My father wouldn’t speak to my mother when I was a little girl. Instead, he’d hug me at the bottom of her driveway after our visit.

Now that I’m older, I see how desperately afraid of conflict he was. And he probably felt shame. His father had left his mother, him, and his two siblings during the dark years of The Great Depression.

My father was hungry as a little boy. Hungry for calories, and hungry for affection.

He vowed to become the father he never had, and while I know how deeply unhappy my father was married to my mother, I also believe he was disappointed in himself that he left the marriage, and dashed his dream of giving me the life he never had.

 

How emotional wounds open

My mother was raised by a strict Presbyterian minister father. Guilt and shame were the heritage of her home. She used to laugh as she told me about going out with her friends as a teenager and how her friends would circle the block after dropping her off to see if she was sitting on the piano bench, framed by the window, with her father lecturing her about all the countless ways she’d sinned.

There was no laughter, however, when I was dropped at the bottom of her driveway. I was greeted by her tears. Her father’s voice, still as present as the piano bench in our living room, turned in on herself, listing all the ways she wasn’t worthy of my father’s love.

She was desperate to be reassured she was loveable. And, because I was the one who came through the door (not my father) I felt that desperation.

 

Emotional wounds impact your Love Well

My parents loved me. Without a doubt. But each of them was wounded, and their wounds were built into my Love Well.

In addition to their love, my father’s shame and my mother’s unworthiness were also built into my Love Well.

So, it leaked.

It leaked and even though my husband tried to love me, that love couldn’t pool up. So, I couldn’t feel it. I felt lonely.

Sometimes I cried because of the lonely feeling, and he’d hug me. I believe moments like this helped me to have energy to feel worthy and I’d do some work on the bottom of that well.

But sometimes I blamed him. I could always find something to blame him for. In these moments when I was least resourceful, I did damage not just to my own Love Well, but also to the well of love my husband and I were trying to build in our marriage.

 

How do you answer the question: “Am I worthy of love?”

My granddaughter will grow up and leave the love nest of her parents’ home one day. She will experience moments in life that make her question her worthiness—none of us humans completely escape that question: Am I worthy of love?

During these moments, I am hopeful for my granddaughter, because I can see that, while she does her own Love Well maintenance, she will come to the task hydrated and ready to put in a good day’s work.

But when the well has been dry for years or decades, you come to the work parched.

How to tell if your Love Well is due for maintenance

It is possible to find someone who will coach you through the process of construction. Someone who will even let you drink out of their well until you get on your feet. But none of us will lead fulfilled lives without a working well of our own.

There is a different time frame for every person, but if you go through friends like Oreo cookies it might be time to examine the health of your own Love Well.

Here are a few signs that your Love Well may need some maintenance, or a complete overhaul:

• You apologize all the time. As you say hello, as you say goodbye, you figuratively apologize for the very air you breathe.
• You blame. You might blame yourself, your partner, the postal carrier, or the check-out clerk.
• You need to be RIGHT. And in order for you to be RIGHT, others must be proven WRONG.
• You check out. You might use scrolling on your phone, alcohol or another substance, or you might just tune out.
• You feel resentful or taken for granted. By your partner, by your extended family. By the world.
• You are a people pleaser. You make it your job to make everyone happy, even when that’s impossible. So you feel like you’ve failed.

Here’s an example:

If you were in my office as one of my private clients, I would have a specific invitation tailor made for you. But because I don’t know your exact needs, I’m going to give you some choices.

Trust yourself to know which invitation is made for you:

1. Self talk. Managing your self-talk is critical maintenance for your love well. I want to recommend a book by my teacher, Martha Beck: Finding Your Own North Star. This book is amazing at helping you talk to yourself differently. The way you talk to yourself is a reflection of the sort of “bottom” you have on your well.
2. Find time to rest. Because rest is a synthesizing emotion and that is key. Listen to episode 58 of this podcast about the three kinds of rest. Rest allows you to tune into YOU. And YOUR needs. Believe it or not, tuning into your needs is foundational work for securing the bottom on your own love well. When you rest, you are valuing yourself. You make yourself worthy of doing nothing but resting. Nothing to prove. Nothing to deserve. You are worthy because you’re breathing.
3. Surround yourself with loving people. Distinction: not to GET love from them. But to create a restful space where you don’t need to care for others. Listen to episode 42 about staying in your own business. It’s powerful for your love well maintenance to be around loving people who don’t need anything from you. It’s an easier space to practice staying in your own business.
4. Hang upside down. Feel your back body. Feel your breath. Even just a forward bend resets your brain chemistry, washing your body with blood and juiciness. Your back body is the Yin part of your body that receives reflected light/energy/love. When you focus on your breath, you allow your sympathetic nervous system to help you reset and rediscover your baseline.

How about you?

How do you do maintenance on your Love Well? Is it easy to feel like you have a full tank, or do you feel that sense of an abyss where no matter how much love comes in it just falls out.

I want to hear from you. What ideas do you have to secure that bottom of your Love Well so that you know you are worthy? Worthy to have an overflowing well of love in you life. Text me at (970)-210-4480 and let me know.