Always Thought I Was So Hard to Love Until You Made It Seem So Easy

Dealing with someone hard to love can be one of the most difficult challenges you'll ever face. When you have no choice but to have that person in your life, the stress of the situation can be incredible.

What if you think you're the person who is hard to love, though? Your life isn't easy, either. You incite anger and worry with your behavior, causing even the relationships you feel sure to suffer. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to feel better about yourself and improve your relationships.

Signs Someone Is Hard to Love

Are You Hard To Love (And Wondering What To Do About It)?

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No one wants to believe they're hard to love. We all want to think we're wonderful people with admirable qualities. Even if you see yourself as a loving person, others might not see you that way. How can you know if you're hard to love? Here are some signs it might be true:

• Others avoid spending time with you.
• You commonly get the feeling that others are quick to be angry with you.
• You often feel misunderstood and misjudged.
• It makes you angry when others don't meet your needs.
• You find it hard to see other people's perspectives.
• You constantly blame others for the way you feel.
• Others deal with you indirectly rather than trying to resolve problems together with you.

Here's Why You Need To Be Loved

If you recognize that others find it hard to love you, you might decide you don't need their love. While it's true that you don't need to be loved by everyone, you do need love in your life. Love is crucial to our wellbeing and mental health.

Psychologists have understood that people need love for a long time. Abraham Maslow included love and belonging as a crucial human need in his hierarchy of needs. Maslow saw this need to be affiliated with others and accepted by others as important that he put it just above physiological needs and safety needs.

Can You Control Being Hard To Love?

The first thing you need to realize is that it's your problem to solve when you're distant or difficult. Love is hard anyway. When your behavior makes it hard to love, you don't just harm others. You make your own life harder, too.

You can't control whether someone else loves you. You can control the attitudes and behaviors that determine whether you're harder or easier to get along with.

What It Takes To Become Easier To Love

Becoming easier to love can be a difficult job, but it's a challenge well worth your time and effort. What does it take to succeed? First, you'll need to find the motivation within yourself to face the challenge. You'll need to be willing to critically examine your behavior and thought processes and as objectively as possible.

You'll have to consider the needs and motivations of others and be willing to look at the impact your behavior has on them. You may have to allow yourself to be vulnerable at times. You'll have to learn new ways of communicating and risk practicing those techniques even when you have doubts. It won't be easy, but if you continue on this path, the rewards are great.

Steps To Opening Yourself To Love

Although becoming more open to receiving love is a major challenge, it isn't impossible. All you need to do is focus on making changes and let the results take care of themselves. Take a hard love approach that keeps you working toward this goal no matter how difficult it seems at times. Consider approaching the challenge in the following ways.

Learn To Love Yourself

As long as you don't love who you are, you can never truly appreciate other people for who they are. Improving your self-esteem, then, needs to be your number one task. Set aside what others think of you for now and focus on what you think of yourself.

Ironically, you can think of yourself as superior to others without really appreciating your own true strengths. Recognize your weaknesses, too, and accept yourself anyway. Rather than pumping yourself up with false bravado, find the genuine good within yourself.

Meet Your Own Needs

Have you ever known someone who was excessively needy? When you see them, you always wonder what they want from you. If they call, you immediately put up your guard to avoid being taken advantage of by them. You may feel extreme pressure to solve their problems for them. It isn't very pleasant, is it?

So, what if you're the needy one? It may be that you don't recognize your needs. If you do, you might feel powerless to take care of them for yourself. While everyone has a time in their life when they can't meet their own needs, you can meet your needs most of the time.

After you improve your self-esteem, start taking more responsibility for your own needs. Stop assuming someone else needs to keep you going. Find it within yourself to not only survive but to thrive on your own as much as possible. People you care about will want to help you more when you're already doing all you can.

Focus on the Positive

Sometimes we complain because we don't know any other way to connect with someone. We assume misery loves company, so we grumble about everything from bad weather to annoying people. People do connect on this basis, but these connections tend to be superficial.

Are You Hard To Love (And Wondering What To Do About It)?

If you want to connect with people on a deeper level, try setting aside those complaints. Focus on the good things that are happening for you and the other person. Work towards positive changes rather than staying stuck in dissatisfaction. It's okay to recognize when something isn't right. Then, instead of complaining about it, approach it as a problem to be solved.

Be Quicker To Compliment Than To Criticize

Criticism can be extremely helpful under certain circumstances. If someone is trying to learn a skill you're good at, they might ask you for feedback on what they need to do differently. If you keep a positive and problem-solving mindset, you may be able to help them.

On the other hand, criticizing when no one has requested your help is usually annoying, frustrating, and angering to other people. It makes you seem harsh and judgmental - When you're confident that your way is best, do what works for you. Trust that others will ask you for advice if they want or need it.

Compliment other people often, but only when you can genuinely say there's something about them that you appreciate. If you don't see anything to compliment, look a little harder. Use your powers of observation and your keen insight to find something admirable in others.

Be Authentic

Compliments are great. Everyone enjoys hearing a sincere acknowledgment of their strengths. On the other hand, it may feel more insulting than gratifying when a compliment seems trumped-up and phony.

If you're complimenting someone solely to get what you want, it's a false compliment. They aren't likely to respond well to you. Does this mean you shouldn't make an effort to appreciate others? Far from it! It means that you need to choose compliments that seem true to you in the first place.

Also, being genuine with others helps them get to know you are. There's always the risk that someone won't like us on that basis, so often, we hide who we are to protect ourselves. Tale the risk of exposing your inner self. If you've done your self-esteem work, you'll be able to allow others to see the real you without fearing what will happen when they do.

Deal With Conflicts Directly

It can be scary to deal with conflict when you're uncertain of the other person's feelings about you. Even if they don't threaten you physically, you may fear they'll reject you or convince others to stop loving you.

When you fear the confrontation, it can lead you to tell someone else about your problems with them or engage in passive-aggressive behavior towards them. Men have traditionally been more likely to be outwardly aggressive when threatened. For women, though, passive-aggressive behavior can seem like the most comfortable way to deal with conflict.

To be more loveable, you may have to take a different approach to conflict than you do now. Rather than talking behind someone's back or sabotaging them subtly, fall back on that problem-solving frame of mind. Bring up your grievance in a respectful way, assuming that you can work out a solution that benefits you both.

Give Others Personal Space And Privacy

If you're a naturally curious person, you may want to know about everything that's going on with the people you want in your life. Or, you might feel that others owe you complete transparency in everything they do that might affect how you feel about them.

Remember that each person has the right to some privacy and personal space. If they don't want to share private information with you, accept that. You don't have to know everything about someone to love them. Once you back off and satisfy yourself with knowing what they allow you to know, they'll feel more comfortable in letting you into their life.

Learn To Be Empathetic

Expressing empathy for others is a powerful way to make yourself more loveable. Everybody has their challenges and problems in life. Instead of focusing on your own need to be love, try to understand how someone else feels.

Empathy comes from acts of imagination. You have to imagine yourself going through what they're going through if you were them. Then, express your empathy in ways that are helpful to them. Maybe they need to hear someone say, "That sounds painful," or even "I can't imagine how hard that must be." Don't do it to be loved. Do it to show love. Then, trust that your positive behavior will benefit both of you.

Ask Questions

Conversations can sometimes seem disconnected as each person lectures the others from their point of view. Such conversations tend to lack warmth and compassion. Next time you're talking with someone, focus more on them. It's easy to do. Just ask them questions to learn more about what they're trying to tell you. It's great to tell your point of view, but it's even more satisfying to know you've been heard. Give that gift to the people you care about.

Avoid Making Unnecessary Judgments

You have to judge situations, events, and people in life to make good decisions. Unfortunately, we sometimes get so used to making these judgments that we think we have to judge everything about everyone and declare it good or bad.

Guess what! Often, it's better to accept people for who they are without placing a value judgment on them. You can allow other people to be different from you without judging that they're inferior. You can notice someone's unusual hairstyle without judging them as sloppy or out-of-style. Notice things and people for what and who they are without always trying to label them.

Respect Others' Right To Choose

Sometimes it's hard to understand why people do the things they do. Let each person decide how to live their lives without feeling compelled to point out the mistakes you feel they're making. Leave room for differences, and you'll make space for more love.

Relax

If you feel that you're making other people uncomfortable, it might be because you are uncomfortable. Learn relation techniques you can use while you're with other people. You might try systematic muscle relaxation or deep breathing exercises if you feel especially anxious. The more relaxed you are, the more you'll be able to use what you know to be a more loveable person.

If you try these suggestions and still feel others find you hard to love, therapy can help you resolve the issues holding you back. You can learn communication skills and relaxation techniques. Licensed counselors are available at ReGain.us for private online therapy on your schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do You Know If You're Hard to Love?

Most people don't want to think of themselves as hard to love. However, if you've struggled in relationships or have received feedback from others that you're difficult to love, you may be wondering if there is some truth to it.

Some signs that you're hard to love can include:

• You don't accept responsibility for your actions
• You're not quick to apologize when you do something wrong
• You demand your way and don't compromise
• You aren't reliable
• Forgiveness is not something that you do
• You have walled up that you won't let people through
• You lie to people or try to manipulate them
• You're not a good listener
• You don't feel that you deserve love

While that's not an easy list to read through if you really want to know if you're hard to love, it can be helpful, to be honest with yourself about this list. Do you see these actions in yourself? Do you think that other people would describe you like this? If so, it could be an indication that you're hard to love.

If you can identify these behaviors in yourself, you can start to work to address them. Working with a therapist can help you see areas that you want to change in your behavior and learn strategies that can help you make long-lasting changes.

How Do You Love Someone Who is Hard To Love?

If you're in a position to love someone difficult to love, it can help you be intentional about your actions and confront your feelings.

Think about what makes the person difficult to love. If it's something that's within their control, it may be helpful to have an honest conversation with them. In relationships, tough love can be important for helping the relationship be healthy for both individuals. While it's hard to hear about actions and behaviors that make it hard to love you, it empowers you to make a change when you know about it. If you're unaware of what you're doing, then you won't be able to make helpful changes.

If someone is difficult to love because they're abusive toward you in any way, it's important to seek help for yourself and/or your relationship. While love is a decision, it could be dangerous for you to remain in a relationship where you could be unsafe. There is a difference between hard-to-love people and people who are taking advantage of you or abusing you in any way.

However, if your relationship is not an abusive one, there are some things that you can try other than just being honest with them about their actions:

• Practice empathy – Sometimes, people are difficult to love for a time because they're going through a trying situation. When you focus on showing empathy, it might make that person seem easy to love instead.
• Focus on the good – It can be easy to get caught up in thinking about difficult things to love about someone, but love is a decision. It can be helpful to be intentional about thinking about the positive qualities that they have.
• Establish boundaries – When people are hard to love, it might mean that you have to love them differently. You may want to establish boundaries around yourself, so you can stay healthy while you're in a relationship with them. Sometimes in relationships, tough love is the necessary way to go.

Why Do I Have A Hard Time Loving Someone?

There can be many different reasons why you have a hard time loving someone. It could be that the other person is difficult to love because of things outside of your control. They may have personal experiences that make it difficult for them to get along with others. It might not be anything that you're doing or not doing.

It could also be that you struggle to love someone because of your own experiences. Some people don't deserve love from you, such as if they're abusive towards you. If they've broken your trust or caused you emotional pain or trauma, it can be hard to love them. Or, you may have experienced situations in your past that make it hard for you to love anyone.

If you find that you're having a difficult time loving someone, you may benefit from working with a therapist to get to the root cause of why you feel the way you do. A therapist can also help you identify strategies that can help you as you move forward.

What Is A Tough Love Relationship?

There are a couple of different ways to look at "tough love" in relationships. Tough love places each individual as responsible for themselves within a relationship. When you show tough love to someone, it may require you to experience the negative consequences of their actions. A common reference to tough love is when a family member of someone with a substance abuse disorder decides to stop covering for the individual's problems. But there are many ways that tough love can be shown in a relationship.

Tough love allows you to establish boundaries that help keep you physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy. It's not about manipulating the other person or trying to punish someone.

If you are interested in learning more about how to include tough love in your relationship, or if you need to, it can be helpful to speak with a mental health professional about your specific situation.

Why Can't I Love Someone Who Loves Me?

If you find it hard to love, you're not alone. Many people struggle with love and relationships of all kinds. It could be that the other person loves you, but you don't feel the same way about them for no particular reason. Or it could be that there is a specific reason in your past, present, or their past or present that is impacting the way you feel about them.

Just because someone loves you doesn't mean that you need to love them in return. And it doesn't mean that you're hard to love or making yourself hard to love. Many different things can impact the way you feel about someone.

If you have concerns about your feelings or ability to love, speaking with a therapist can help you identify any challenges that you're facing.

Is Love Hard or Easy?

If only there were an easy answer to this question. The truth is it's hard to love some people and easy to love others. But love is a decision. That means even when it's hard to love someone, it doesn't mean that you have to walk away from them. But it also doesn't mean that you shouldn't at the same time.

There are many reasons why some people are hard to love. It could be because of past hurt or trauma that they've experienced in life or relationships. Or it could be any number of other things. If you're struggling in a relationship with loving someone, it could be a sign that the relationship is unhealthy. Or it could simply be a sign that you could benefit from working with a therapist to learn new strategies for the relationship.

Now, on the other hand, some people feel easy to love. And while that's nice, it's important to remember that relationships aren't always easy. That means while it might have been easy to love someone, in the beginning, you may go through rough patches where you don't feel that you love them or that it's become hard to love them. This doesn't mean you're not in love anymore. Love is a decision that will arise from time to time in relationships.

So while it would be nice to know if love was always supposed to be easy or if you should expect it to be hard, the answer is there are times when it might feel like a little of both.

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Source: https://www.regain.us/advice/love/am-i-hard-to-love-and-what-can-i-do-about-it/