Many people think they have “lesson learned” after a disappointment in love. In reality, experts say, they're just erecting barriers that affect their entire lives—from relationships to careers. The problem is not the lack of love, but the blockages we build without realizing it.
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Bestselling American author, researcher and international lecturer, known as a pioneer in bridging the gap between modern science and spirituality, Gregg Braden argues that the way we commonly understand love is wrong and that it shows in the way people come to relate to each other.
He bases his explanation on over 2,000-year-old texts discovered in Egypt after World War II that were not included in the modern Bible. From here, he says that people don't suddenly lose their ability to love, but gradually give it up without realizing it, as they go through experiences that make them more reserved.
Love doesn't mean the same thing to everyone
Gregg Braden says two people can feel the same way and still come to completely different decisions. “Think about it. Two people love animals and want the same thing: to end suffering. But love takes them in different directions.”
He gives the example of a deer hit by a car in front of two people on a road at night. One of them tries to save him, take care of him and hope that he will recover. The other believes that the animal is suffering too much and should be relieved of its pain.
They both say they do what they do out of love, but they arrive at opposite solutions. The difference is not how much they feel, but how each understands what it means to help. This is where Braden's idea comes from: love doesn't automatically lead to the same choices. It is filtered by personal experiences and how each has learned to view suffering and responsibility.
The wound from the first love and the wall that remains
Gregg Braden links this kind of difference in reaction to personal experiences, especially early relationships that leave strong traces. “Never again will I allow myself to love so deeply. This means, in fact, that I will never allow myself to open up completely to someone again, at the risk of losing again.” he says.
According to him, after a painful experience, many people change the way they enter into a relationship. They no longer have the same openness, they no longer have the same confidence and they set limits that, most of the time, they are not even aware of.
Specifically, Braden talks about a protective mechanism that occurs almost automatically after a severe disappointment. The problem, he says, is that this protection doesn't go away with time, but stays there and begins to influence all our subsequent relationships.
Instead of protecting, it ends up blocking the very thing people are looking for: real closeness. And relationships gradually become more cautious and less genuine.
Why doesn't love disappear?
To reframe the issue, Braden turns to the Persian poet Rumi, and the quote he brings up reverses the usual logic with which people relate to love: “Rumi used to say that you should not look for love, but see what you have built in yourself against it.”
This idea, Braden says, completely changes the direction of the effort. Nothing should be built from the outside. Love already exists, as an innate capacity. What needs to be done is to identify and remove the obstacles accumulated within, the blockages formed by disappointments, rejections and relationships that did not work and that remain active long after those situations have passed. At first they function as protection, but over time they come to determine how people engage or refuse to engage in new relationships.
Gregg Braden bases part of his argument on documents discovered in Egypt at Nag Hammadi in the 1940s. It is a collection of Gnostic and Christian texts that were not included in the modern Bible, after the reorganizations in the 4th century, during the time of Emperor Constantine the Great.
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From these writings, Braden quotes a passage attributed to Jesus: “If you bring out what's inside you, what you bring out will save you. If you don't bring out what's inside you, what you don't bring out will destroy you.”
He talks about unexpressed emotions and argues that what is not processed remains active in the body and can have consequences over time. The parable of the woman with the jug also appears in the same context: “The kingdom of the Father is like a woman carrying a pitcher full of flour. While she was walking on the road, still far from home, the handle of the pitcher broke, and the flour spilled out behind her. The woman did not realize it. Only when she got home did she notice that the pitcher was empty.”
Braden breaks the parable down into layers. The jug full of flour represents the full capacity to love with which man starts out in life. The long way home is life itself. The broken cake and the flour that is spilled, without the woman noticing, represent the moments when man gives up pieces of himself to maintain peace, to adapt, to avoid conflict. And the woman who does not notice that the jug has emptied represents the lack of awareness of this process, the fact that the loss occurs, most of the time, without any warning signal.
When you learn from a young age that you have to give in
Gregg Braden says that the way people end up limiting their ability to love is directly related to the environment in which they grow up.
He gives the example of families where there is constant tension, abuse or power imbalance, situations where children quickly learn that peace is achieved through compromise. They no longer stand up for their point of view, avoid conflict, and come to believe that in order to keep the peace, they must give up their own needs.
“In order to have peace, we end up letting it go. We say it doesn't matter what we think or what we want, because someone else decides.” he explained.
This type of behavior does not only appear in extreme situations, but also forms in seemingly mundane contexts, where a child's opinion is constantly ignored – for example, in a family where decisions are always made by others, and his preferences are not taken into account. Here, the recurring message, regardless of context, is the same: what you want or how you feel doesn't matter enough.
Over time, this idea does not disappear. It remains in the background and begins to influence later relationships, where the man avoids expressing himself, gives in more easily, and ends up feeling that he cannot fully enter into a relationship, even if he wants to.
Love is not calculated
Gregg Braden says that one of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to manage their emotions by thinking alone.
In his view, the mind works on the basis of oppositions – good or bad, right or wrong, valuable or worthless – and this kind of logic does not help when it comes to relationships. As much as people try to “solve” love in these terms, the more they stay stuck in the same types of behavior.
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“The heart does not work in terms of black or white. There is no heart that judges and one that approves.” he says. It argues that emotions cannot be reduced to rules or rational decisions, and that when people try to control everything through logic, they end up making the same mistakes without understanding why.
His central idea is that people are not spectators of their own relationships, but actively participate in the shape they take, including how they react, interpret, and refrain from exposing themselves.
“We live in a universe where the way we look at things matters,” he adds, referring to ideas in physics that observation can influence outcome.
So people don't just go through relationships, they contribute to the shape they take, even when they don't realize it. What is lost, Braden argues, is not really gone. The capacity to love cannot be destroyed, only hidden. People hide it because they've learned it's not safe to be vulnerable, and sometimes they hide it so well that they think it's gone. “The good news is that what we think is lost is never really lost. It is never gone, because our love cannot be destroyed.”
The work that remains to be done, according to his words, is precisely to find the place where this capacity to love has been hidden and to recreate the conditions in which it can reappear, not by building something new, but by removing what blocks it.
