Love Thrives When We're Open to Pain

Something hit me the other day while writing, kind of like a quiet little truth I’d been avoiding:

If you block pain, you also block love

I know — sounds strange at first. I mean, pain and love — they don’t feel the same, right?

One hurts. One feels good. But they come from the same place.

The same raw, open space inside us. That place where you're not guarded. Where you're just… brutally raw you.

You can’t selectively numb emotions. If you shut yourself off from grief, fear, sadness — you also start closing the door on joy, connection, intimacy.

Let me tell you a short story. Years ago, my grandfather was dying. I loved him deeply, but when I found out, he said “Don’t come,” (not because he didn’t want to see me, but — I think — because he just didn’t want me to suffer), and I didn’t.

I used that as permission not to face the goodbye. To not feel the heaviness of watching someone I love slip away. And when he passed, I stood at his funeral, surrounded by tears — but I felt nothing. I had shut myself off completely.

Back then, I thought I was protecting myself. Now I know I was postponing my pain. And the body remembers what the heart avoids.

The body remembers everything the heart avoids

That’s where somatic pain comes in — the kind that isn’t just in your mind. It lives in your chest, your gut, your back (Feldner et al., 2003). Unfelt emotions don’t just vanish. They store themselves. They wait. And over time, that storage turns into anxiety, emotional numbness, even physical illness.

Carl Jung once said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” That darkness — the pain, the grief, the heartbreak — is not there to destroy you. It’s there to wake you up. To purify something in you.

I know “purify” sounds dramatic. But think of it like this: You go through something painful. You let yourself feel it fully. You don’t run, numb, or distract yourself. You breathe through it. Cry through it. And on the other side, you’re softer. More real. Wiser. More compassionate. That’s purification and growth.

Kintsugi pottery

Source: Unsplash/Riho Kitagawa

The Japanese have a concept called kintsugi — where they repair broken pottery with gold. They don’t hide the cracks. They honor them. The break becomes the beauty.

What if we treated our emotional wounds like that?

Instead of hiding our pain, we embrace it. We let it change us. We become stronger not because we avoided being broken — but because we allowed ourselves to be broken and healed.

Now think about love. We fall for someone… and then we stop ourselves. We say, “Nope. I’ve been hurt before. I know how this ends.” So we hold back, love carefully. We give only parts of ourselves.

We think we’re being smart. But really… we’re blocking the experience.

Imagine getting a massage, but you don’t let your body relax. You are tense, bracing for pain, thinking too much. So the massage happens — but it doesn’t land. You don’t feel better after. You blocked it.

Now think about how often we do that in love. We’re there, but not fully there. Half in. Half out. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. And modern dating makes it worse — it teaches us to be cool, cautious, "not too available." Why? Because the mind is trying to protect us from hurt. But your soul — the real, deep part of you — doesn’t want to play those games. It just wants to feel— even if it hurts. Because pain is part of love. Not because love should hurt — but because anything that opens your heart will also expose it.

Pain is part of love. Not because love should hurt — but because love makes you feel

And the more you allow yourself to feel pain… the more you open yourself up to love.

So maybe ask yourself this: Am I really protecting myself? Or am I postponing the full experience of life?

Because loving halfway might feel safe. But it also means living halfway. And you deserve more than that. So what if we tried the opposite? What if you let yourself feel fully — even when it’s scary? What if you cried when it hurts, laughed when it’s good, stayed present when it’s messy?

What if that is what real self-love looks like? Not staying safe — but staying open.

Because on the other side of that vulnerability is something golden. Soul-level golden. The kind of love, clarity, and peace that only comes when you stop running and start feeling.