FEAR OF MAN

Have you ever felt so desperate for someone to love you and not leave you, to the point of making yourself feel ill when you look back and think how desperate you must have looked? Almost to the point of begging to be seen and held, and yet the “someone” you love is so near you can hear them breathe.  What is it that makes you so fragile that even when the one you love steps away or threatens to leave, you run after them and plead for them to stay?

A friend and myself spoke about this the other day, and found that in common we both never had father figures to look up to, to fulfill the space that still lay empty in both of us.  We were wondering, had this space been filled as a child, would we have been better at judging the men that came our way through our lives?

 Its actually such a sad place to be in, when you become so scared that the person will leave that you are willing to sell your self worth to keep them, and yet truth be told if that person is willing to take the chance of losing you by threatening to leave, then was he or she ever really honest about how they felt towards you?

I have never threatened to leave someone I love because of a fight or hurtful words that were said, and find it so hard to understand how cold someone must be to want to cause the other person such pain and uncertainty about how they feel about you.

I think it’s so important for fathers to show love and teach love to their kids. From a girl’s point of view; to know how a man should be treating her, and from a boy’s point of view; how to treat a woman.

When there is a short fall in this relationship growing up, it causes so many woman to end up marrying who they said they never would , because it’s the same traits and the only ones they know to look for when looking for a man.

I swore after watching my dad hit my mom all her living life, I would never marry a man who hits me. But 2 years into my first marriage there we were pulling each other around and hitting wherever our arms would reach. I remember one night we had each other by the hair and when I looked up my son who was 1 years old at the time was standing with his huge blue eyes so scared staring at us. I let go of my husband when I saw myself all those years ago, watching my dad as he hit my mom.

What had I allowed myself to become? I looked at my husband and said "today is the last day I will ever physically fight you back."  It was so very hard to stick to that promise as he carried on for a while longer. But it all stopped the day we both committed our lives to the Lord and got baptized.

We used to party and drink, both habits we had learnt from our upbringing, but this was no excuse for us to be doing it. Once we began living God’s way our whole life changed, and the funny thing was we didn’t want to go out any more, we both gave up drinking, not that we were heavy drinkers, just socially, but now that the people we mixed with didn’t need drink to have fun, we soon learnt that lifestyle too. The fun never stopped just because the party did.

Although my lifestyle changed I had never learnt the key to putting aside my insecurities, and fear of losing the one I love.  At this point of my story I have to tell you that my marriage fell apart many, many years later, and although I found love again I still have this fear that haunts me. When I think back to my first marriage I remember when we first went out. One day after a huge fight my boyfriend, as he was then, packed his bags and left and there I was hanging on his bags, begging him to stay.

I would be so scared of being left on my own. Afterwards I would hate myself for being so desperate. I would slowly start to build up this small wall around my heart toward the person who allowed this desperate person to show her hidden face, until my whole heart no longer belonged to the one who should have held it dear.

This was the story of my life, begging, pleading, and letting go. I had learnt that I had this ugly side to me, that once someone hurt me I would write them off. You know what is really sad? I felt I had let Jesus down so many times and yet He never wrote me off.

In my second marriage I realized I never wanted to walk that walk of getting divorced again, and I never wanted to allow that wall to begin to be built again. I have tried to forgive and move on when things hurt. It’s so very hard because it kicks against everything I have ever known.  I have never had to leave my heart open and I had to go and see a counselor to help me to not start building walls.  I felt so vulnerable and exposed, I had never opened up to any other man about so many details of my life that were locked away in a closest, and this time around I did. I still don’t know if this was a good thing or bad, because it can be held against you for the wrong reasons and it can sometimes be a good weapon to use to hurt you.  

But for the wrong or the right, I wanted this relationship to be started on a different foot.  Now that my walls are down my fear of losing this marriage has risen to new heights I don’t know how to climb. I am constantly learning to forgive and move on and not out. I am more on my knees and in my bible then I have ever been. I feel like a failure more than not and I never know what tomorrow holds.

I stopped typing this story to chat again with my friend about being desperate, and now we have it, and this may help you too if you are in the same place we are.

The reason we are desperate to the point of begging is because we have made this person a God, If God was our all in all, we would not be desperate to hang on to them but rather to God. When I was making some tea just now I was thinking about this, and I remembered something my ex-husband once said to me, that when he looks at me with my new husband, he can see for the first time I love this man with the love He used to love me with. Now I need to explain this. My ex-husband made me to almost be his god, to the point of it not being healthy for him.  I am not saying that to lose someone you love won’t hurt, but being so desperate to the point of being fearful all the time, and losing sleepless nights wondering if they will leave, is not right.

Perhaps if we fill our fear space with God we will begin to slowly lose the fear that binds us.  Proverbs 29:25 says “The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe (secure)”

The trap of fear  can ensnare you, and trap you from living the life you should be living, but if we put our trust in God we will be secure and protected from fear.

I have prayed for God to release every woman reading this who may be trapped in fear. May our Lord God be your all in all and fill every space that you are vulnerable in.