The thing is that there are many KINDS of love....read the 4 Loves by C S Lewis to better understand this.

English only has the one word LOVE for all the different kinds of love & it gets confusing where Greek has a different term for each type of love so that people better understand the kind of love they are experiencing toward the other person & the other person has a better understanding of the emotions involved also.

There is brotherly love, the kind you feel within the family, affectionate love (storge), friendship love (philia), romantic love (eros), & spiritual love (agape).

Learning to love without clinging onto the person you love would also be another solution to not allowing yourself to love them at all & denying emotional connection which I found makes life difficult to even connect with friends then.