
To Risk or Not to Risk: The Unsettling Freedom of Modern Love
by Veronika | Jun 30, 2025
London is sweltering through another heatwave. Trains are delayed, tempers are short, and sleep is elusive. One of my fiercely independent, long-time single clients confessed – half amused, half wistful – that just the other day, she drifted off mid-meeting, caught in a fleeting daydream that had nothing to do with quarterly targets and everything to do with a stranger’s lingering glance on the tube.
A cool drink in hand, sun-kissed skin, feet curled on a sun-lounger, she basked in a daydream where her heart danced to the sound of someone laughing next to her. The world shimmered with invitation. And with it, the old longing resurfaced: to be wanted, witnessed, and met. To love, or be loved. To be in relationship.
The Risk of Reaching
This tension between longing and reluctance is more than emotional: Gestalt therapist Ruella Frank and psychoanalyst Frances La Barre describe “reaching” as a core movement in human contact, the act of moving toward connection while simultaneously offering ourselves to be reached in return. In other words, desire opens us, makes us vulnerable – not only in pursuit of connection, but in readiness to let connection touch us.
And just like that, the longing got shelved again, folded away between practicality and pride. Because wanting love? That’s easy. Daring to reach for it – especially when you no longer need it – is something else entirely.
In much of the modern Western world, relationships have become both luxury and liability. We no longer need to be in one. That liberation – hard-earned, particularly for women – has granted autonomy, ambition, and choice. We can raise children alone, build empires, enjoy sex without emotional debt, and go home to our own perfectly plumped cushions. But what was once an unquestioned rite of passage has become a terrain fraught with paradox. When you don’t need love, choosing it becomes exponentially harder.
Because to choose relationship is to risk. And to risk, again and again, when your body already knows the sting of disappointment, betrayal, or the slow erosion of intimacy over years – that is no small thing.
What If This Is the Last Time I Try?
In our twenties, the forward motion of hormones and hope can do much of the heavy lifting. A spark becomes a story. The promise of “maybe this is it” provides enough adrenaline to launch into the unknown. But as time moves forward – especially beyond thirty – our choices become more entangled. The fantasy doesn’t fade, but the stakes rise.
The clock isn’t just ticking for those who wish to start families. It ticks for everyone trying to make the most of their aliveness. The loss of time weighs heavy. If this isn’t it, do I waste another year? If it is, and I mess it up, will I ever trust myself again?
The tension between me and we becomes more pronounced with age. Career dreams, personal healing, and the joy of living on one’s own terms compete with the longing to be met, held, understood. And that longing isn’t just romantic – it’s existential. As we grow, we don’t just want someone to have dinner with. We want to be seen in our fullness. Not just to love, but to be mirrored in our becoming.
The Body Always Knows
Here’s the catch: the unconscious has a way of pursuing its own goals while we’re busy convincing ourselves we know what we’re doing. As Dr. John Bargh points out, much of what drives our decisions happens below the surface. We swipe, pursue, pull away, or sabotage without always understanding why.
It’s only later—when it ends or stagnates—that we hear the faint voice that was there all along: the small contraction in the chest, the subtle disconnect between words and actions, the moment our stomach tightened but we smiled anyway. We tell ourselves the other person let us down, but often, the first betrayal was our own refusal to listen.
We over-identify with our ideas of who we are in relationship. “I’m the open one.” “I’m emotionally available.” But what we do—our actual relational patterns—may say something quite different. And yet we rarely stop to ask: what is it I actually do in intimacy—not what I say I do, but what plays out when I’m triggered, when I’m met, when I’m afraid?
The Pattern Knows the Way Back Home
We all have relational blueprints—formed through early experiences and reinforced through repetition. And unless actively worked through, we end up drawing more of the same toward us. This doesn’t mean we’re doomed. But it does mean awareness matters.
There’s an old psychoanalytic truth: what is not made conscious will be lived out as fate. In love, this shows up in who we are drawn to, how we interpret their silences, how quickly we push away or pull in. The work of maturity is learning to break our own patterns—not just to attract a different kind of partner, but to be a different kind of partner.
Different Ages, Same Ache
In your thirties, you may wrestle with competing clocks—fertility, career ambition, parental pressure. In your forties, you may have survived enough endings to question if starting again is brave or foolish. In your fifties and beyond, you may find yourself unexpectedly longing again, but with less patience for games and far more clarity about what matters.
But at every age, the ache is the same: the longing to connect without losing yourself. The hope that someone will stay, not just physically, but emotionally. That they’ll turn toward you in the messy middle, when it’s no longer cute or easy.
And still, despite the overthinking, the hesitations, the instinct to retreat, the longing remains. It doesn’t disappear. It waits. Patiently. For a moment of courage. For a breath of truth. For something in you to say: maybe this time, I’ll stay open.
To Choose Love is to Choose Risk
There is no bypassing the mess of it. You will get it wrong. You will disappoint and be disappointed. Some love stories end not with drama, but with drift. Others never start, because we don’t text back. Or we fall too fast and ignore our own signals. Or we become too careful, guarding the softest parts of ourselves behind a wall of casual indifference.
But somewhere in that mess is the possibility of something real. Not perfect. Not guaranteed. But real.
The kind of love that requires you to keep showing up even when the story isn’t going to plan. The kind that makes you ask not just who they are, but who you become in their presence.
And perhaps, that’s the risk worth taking.
We say we’re busy. That timing isn’t quite right. That we’re focusing on ourselves. But often what we’re really avoiding is the rawness of not knowing—of stepping into something uncertain, unfiltered, unguaranteed. Love, especially as we grow older, demands more from us. More honesty. More attunement. More willingness to look at how we protect ourselves, even from the very thing we want most.
If you’re reading this and feeling the quiet sting of disconnection—the doubt, the ache, the wondering if closeness is still possible—know this: you’re not alone. Your pain is real. Your longing makes sense. And your capacity to connect hasn’t disappeared.
Therapy can be one place to begin again. A relationship where you don’t have to perform, fix, or hold it all together. Where you can just be—curious, honest, human. And in that space, slowly, something begins to repair. Something begins to feel possible again.
If this article resonates and you would like to find out how I can help you, contact me to schedule a confidential enquiry call today. I work in private practice and head up The Village Clinic.
References
Bargh, J. A. (2017). Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do. Touchstone.
British Psychological Society. (2021). The power of relational therapy: A guide for clinicians. [BPS Guidelines]
Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. Tavistock.
Frank, R., & La Barre, F. (2011). The First Year and the Rest of Your Life: Movement, Development, and Therapeutic Change. The Analytic Press.
Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. Norton.
Wachtel, P. L. (2008). Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy. Guilford Press.