How to Stop Chasing Love, and Start Feeling Secure

If you’ve ever wondered how to stop chasing love, you’re not alone.

Let’s be honest.

Most of us have tried to “get” love before.

We’ve tried to earn it.

To control it.

To keep it close by over-functioning, over-giving, or over-analyzing every word.

It makes sense, especially if your nervous system learned that love wasn’t always safe or consistent.

But here’s the truth: Love doesn’t grow where there’s grasping. It grows where there’s safety, freedom, and mutual willingness.

Let’s explore why needing, controlling, or chasing doesn’t work in relationships, and what to do instead.

1. Needing Turns Love Into Survival

There’s nothing wrong with needing connection. We’re wired for it.

But when your nervous system shifts from desiring love to needing it to feel okay, everything changes. You stop relating and start surviving.

This might look like:

• Feeling panicked if they don’t reply right away

• Constantly wondering if you did something wrong

• Basing your worth on whether they’re available, affectionate, or responsive

The more we “need” someone to soothe our insecurity, the less safe the relationship becomes, because now love feels conditional.

Not free.

Not chosen.

Not mutual.

2. Trying to Control Creates Disconnection

When love feels uncertain, many people start trying to manage the outcome.

They control what they say, how they show up, how much they share, or they micromanage the other person’s behavior to avoid discomfort.

But control is the opposite of intimacy. You can’t be truly known if you’re constantly editing yourself. And you can’t feel truly loved if you only feel safe when things go your way.

Trying to control someone else (or the emotional environment) often leads to:

• Tension

• Performance

• Inauthentic dynamics

• Emotional shutdown on both sides

Control is usually a trauma response. But what it ends up creating is exactly what we fear: disconnection.

3. Chasing Closes the Space That Love Needs to Breathe

When you’re always chasing love, through fixing, pleasing, overexplaining, or overinvesting, you send an energetic message: “I don’t trust that love will come toward me on its own. So I have to go get it.” That’s exhausting. And it often leads to imbalance, where one person is always reaching, and the other is pulling away.

Love needs breathing room. It needs consent, choice, and space.

You can’t force closeness by chasing it.

You cultivate it by being grounded, available, and emotionally present, with yourself first.

So What Does Work?

🌀 Regulation over reaction

Learn to pause when your inner alarm goes off. Soothe your nervous system before reaching out.

💬 Self-expression, not manipulation

Share your truth because it’s yours, not because you’re hoping to “get” something back.

🌱 Receptivity over pursuit

Create the space for love to land. When you stop pushing, love can meet you.

Love Cannot Be Extracted. It Must Be Offered.

You can’t get love by performing, proving, or controlling.

But you can receive it:

When you show up as your whole self.

When you stop reaching and start relating.

When you build safety from the inside out.

Want to stop chasing and start healing?

That’s exactly what we do together at Beacon Hill, through individual coaching, programs, and safe relational practice. ✨ Book a session 💛 Or explore our signature programs:Secure to Love Again™ for womenAnchor Point™ for men

Real support. Meaningful connection. Lasting change.

You’re not meant to do this alone. Let’s take the next step together.