There are distinct challenges around trying to offer love to someone who isn't convinced that they are, deep down, worthy of such a thing.
Imagine a relationship between Sarah and Dan.
It began three months ago and things are flourishing: two weekends ago, they went on a romantic break to Paris, last weekend, she took him to meet her parents, and this weekend, they are going to see a group of his friends in the city he went to university in.
All the signs are that they like each other very much and that the relationship may flourish.
But let's also imagine that when Dan was a little boy, his mother was offhand and uninterested in him, preferring to devote herself to his older sister.
Though this was many years ago, and Dan is now accomplished in his profession and his life more broadly, he carries just below the surface a wound with the power to cause substantial difficulties in any love story in the here and now.
It's when Sarah starts to offer him intense affection that the problems start.
It's not that her love is undesired.
It's just that it is — at an unconscious level — deeply difficult to accept.
In order to protect himself from hurt, young Dan had to build his character to withstand isolation and endure loneliness and a meager emotional diet.
