Do you feel loved?
Why don’t you feel loved? What would make you feel loved? How do you define love?
Do echoes of you childhood impact your ability to feel loved now?
Do you think someone actually loves you but somehow you block that love or can’t see/feel that love?
How do you make it through each day aching to be loved, but not feeling loved?
Is feeling loved something that comes from inside you? Or is it something others can give you? Or is it both?
What can fill the need to be loved when you don’t feel loved?
Passive Aggressive Abuse 
Wow, I need a coffee for that one this morning!!
I do feel love; from my children, from my friends and my family members. But for a long time I didn’t feel love from my pah. I actually thought he must really not like me at all to treat me the way that he did, in fact I thought he hated me and I questioned many times why he stayed with me if that’s how he felt. In my mind, your loved ones should always feel like you love them. I bent over backwards to make this man happy, to give him what he needed and wanted only to feel nothing but rejection, despised and hatred from him. It didn’t matter in the end whether I was good or bad, but being good was worse, he made me feel guilty for being a good person and taking care of my family, for being a good friend, laughed at me for being too kind, for being too loving or what he called “too nice” to people. He would tell me that people only wanted to be close to me because I had charm and not looks, that I attracted men that way, that it wasn’t because I was pretty. No I definetely didn’t feel loved by him.
I didn’t block any love coming or given to my kids, I didn’t block love for friends and family and I liked receiving it as well, but I didn’t want to be loved by the pah after a while and I blocked loved to him as well simply because I wasn’t loved properly, I wasn’t respected and I was treated like the dirt on the bottom of his shoe. Yes I definetely blocked love, and eventually whatever love I had for him went away.
I didn’t like myself either, I didn’t know who I was after so many years of abuse, I believed whatever he said about me, until I started to take care of myself, started to figure out who I was, and started to see myself through other people’s eyes and realized who I was. People are not just my friends because I’m charming, in fact I’m just a really nice friendly person and I’m smart and I’m a good person to converse with, and guess what I am pretty :) in every sense of the word, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, he didn’t think I was pretty because he had no love for me, he may have said the words, but it didn’t match what was in his heart. Now I like me, in fact I love me, I take care of me and allow myself to love me, warts and all as they say. Funny thing happens when you start to love yourself, you start being stronger and you have the courage to get the hell out…. :D
Do I ache to feel love from a man, yes for sure, and it will come at some point, but first, I’ll give myself the love that I didn’t all those years ago. Then I’ll be able to love another man better.
This is going to be a pretty complicated answer. For me, feeling loved is a hug or a shoulder rub “just because.” You don’t have to do anything for it, it’s just like a rush of affection you feel for someone because you know them well and you like being with them. It’s kind of a fleeting emotion, very similar to empathy or sympathy or compassion, but it’s happier.
Feeling loved is different than being loved, I think. To me, I like the Bible’s definition of love. It’s not a feeling, it’s more of a commitment or a dedication to someone else’s well-being. I can love my husband even though I don’t like him very much anymore. As far as feeling loved by him, I don’t feel that either, though I do feel his intense neediness for me. It’s the old “I feel like his mother” thing we all write about so much. I love him now in the sense that I feel kind of sorry for him and know that if I kicked him out the door he’d just sit there and fall apart. If I were to ever “feel love” for another man, it would have to be someone pretty special and I’m not sure that man exists.
There are definitely days I don’t feel very loved, because now it’s just me and him, since the kids are all away from home. I mostly depend on my dad for hugs now, and that only since my mom passed away. He’s a different person now that he doesn’t have her to depend on anymore. I have to say, though, that just being a Christian, knowing that when they say “Jesus loves you,” that it’s really true, and you know He has your back even at the times you don’t deserve it. I don’t know how people who don’t have that comfort make it through each day. That said, I still feel lonely a lot and spend a lot of time by myself, but that’s my introvert personality coming through, too.
I used to sit and braid my daughters’ hair while we watched TV, and I remember my son laying his head on my lap while I tried to braid his short Marine hair, ignoring my “me time” and my to-do-list and spending time just being affectionate with my kids, and to me, that time of just hanging out together was love at its best. I’m looking forward to the holidays :-).
Wow. You’re setting down the questions that I’ve been turning around inside of me. No more time right now, but so glad you started this topic.