We all want love.
To be seen. Held. Kept.
To have someone choose us and keep choosing us.
But when love actually arrives?
We flinch.
We shut down.
We get suspicious.
We sabotage.
We ghost, overgive, push away, cling too tightly—or pretend we don’t care at all.
And it’s not because we’re broken.
It’s because most of us were never taught what love actually feels like when it’s safe.
We only know what it felt like when it was conditional.
We don’t know how to receive love.
We say we want love, but when someone offers it—really offers it—we can’t believe it’s real.
Because maybe love, for you, looked like:
Earning affection through achievement. Keeping the peace to stay accepted. Being hyper-aware of someone else’s moods just to stay “safe.” Being needed instead of truly known.
So when someone says, “You don’t have to do anything—I just love you as you are,”
your nervous system doesn’t know what to do with that.
It doesn’t feel comforting.
It feels dangerous.
Like the rug’s going to be pulled any second.
Because that’s what you were taught.
That love isn’t love unless you hustle for it.
We don’t know how to give love, either.
We think we do. We try. We want to.
But we give from wounded places.
From fear, obligation, control, or the desperate hope that “if I love them enough, they’ll never leave.”
That’s not love. That’s survival.
We give too much.
We expect people to fill holes they didn’t create.
We keep trying to prove we’re lovable—without even realising it.
Real love doesn’t work like that.
Real love is calm.
Consistent.
Patient.
It doesn’t ask you to shrink, prove, or perform.
It just is.
So what do we do with this truth?
We stop pretending we’re fine.
We start being honest about how terrified we are of closeness.
We start asking harder questions:
Where did I learn to equate love with suffering? Why do I feel guilty when someone treats me with care? What part of me still believes I’m not enough?
And we start reparenting ourselves with love that doesn’t hurt.
You are allowed to re-learn love.
You’re allowed to:
Take up space in someone’s heart without feeling like a burden. Ask for reassurance without apologising for needing it. Be messy, human, soft, confused, vulnerable—and still be loved.
You’re not too much.
You’re not too complicated.
You’re not “bad at love.”
You’re just unlearning years of confusion.
And the fact that you’re still open to love—even after all the ways it let you down?
That’s proof of your heart. That’s real strength.
So here’s to the healing kind of love.
The gentle kind.
The kind you give yourself first.
The kind that doesn’t make you beg.
The kind that feels like home.
—
Written by Lorraine for Confidence Unlocked.
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