According to Osho, attractive people feel frightening because their beauty exerts power and magnetism that threatens your freedom. The deeper the attraction, the stronger the pull to cling, depend, and become possessed—raising fear of losing yourself. Love and freedom conflict; without awareness, attraction and fear arise together. Beauty empowers the other to possess you, while insecurity seeks control, creating impossible demands and anxiety.
You’re scared because strong attraction makes you worry you’ll lose your freedom and become dependent.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why do I find attractive people frightening?
If it is frightening, let it be frightening, but go into it. The fear will disappear. The only way to drop any fear is to go into the very thing of which you are afraid. If somebody comes to me and says that "I am afraid of darkness," then I always suggest to them, "The only way is: go into the dark night, sit somewhere alone outside the town under a tree. Tremble! Perspire, be nervous, but sit there! How long can you tremble? Slowly slowly, things will settle. The heart will start beating normally... and suddenly you will see that darkness is not that frightening either. And slowly slowly you will become aware of the beauties of darkness -- which only darkness can have: the depth, the silence, the velvety touch of it, the stillness, the music of the dark night, the insects, the harmony. And slowly slowly, as…
Osho, why am I afraid of women?
That lean, thin woman was going to decide. This is the situation. Man tries in his ways, somehow, to possess the woman; the woman tries to possess the man. The woman is afraid because man can be physically violent. The man is afraid because the woman is psychologically very very clever, very very powerful. You ask me, Prabhudas, "WHY AM I AFRAID OF WOMEN?" You are afraid of love; you are afraid of losing your ego. You are asking a wrong question. And remember always: the mind tries many times to give you a wrong question. A little twist, a little turn, and the question becomes wrong. Now you ask, "WHY AM I AFRAID OF WOMEN?" The question seems to be perfectly right; it is not. You should have asked: why am I afraid of love? and then it would have been right. It is a wrong question. But many…
Osho, I would like to fall in love, but I am afraid of beautiful women, and so afraid of love, and I don't know why. Why is it so hard for me to fall in love?
Parivartan, that thing you are certainly saying with some intelligence. And when you are thinking and planning a well planned life, then fall in love with an ugly woman. It will be difficult in the beginning, but then it is sweet all the way! And always think of the future -- that's how calculating people do. What it is? Just a bitter pill in the beginning, it's okay, but then it is very health-giving. Ugly women are medicinal, but beautiful women are sweet in the beginning and very bitter in the end. And this is not my advice to you; Gautam Buddha also says the same thing -- in a different context, of course. He cannot be so truthful as I am. He says: The world is sweet in the beginning but very bitter in the end, and the other world is very bitter in the beginning but very sweet…
Osho, why do women like to be attractive to men when they also resent their sexual desires?
Now that is simple logic. If she says yes, you reduce her to a mechanism; you use her. And nobody wants to be used. It is the other side of the same power politics. Power means the capacity to use the other, and when somebody uses you your power is gone, you are reduced to powerlessness. So no woman wants to be used. And you have been doing that down the ages. Love has become an ugly thing. It should be the greatest glory, but it is not -- because man has been using woman and the woman resents it, resists it, naturally. She does not want to be reduced to a commodity. That's why you will see husbands just wagging their tails around their wives and their wives in such an attitude that they are above all this nonsense -- holier-than-thou. The wives go on pretending that they are…
Why am I afraid of other people?
If you are afraid of yourself. only then are you afraid of other people. If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. Because in relationship with others, it is only you mirrored. The other is nothing but a mirror. So whatsoever happens in relationship, always know it must have happened before, within you -- because the relationship can only magnify. It cannot create; it can only show and manifest. If you love yourself, you love others. If you are afraid of yourself, you are afraid of others. Because, in coming in contact with others you will start manifesting your being. You have been conditioned -- in the East, in the West, everywhere. Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jain -- you all have been conditioned to hate yourself. It has been taught to you continuously that to love oneself is bad. 'Love others. Hate yourself.' This is…