LOVE

The Paradox of Love: Understanding It by Living Its Opposite

Love is one of life’s great paradoxes. We crave it, we chase it, we idealize it, but often, we do not recognize it until we have endured its absence or a distorted version of it. I have come to believe that you have to live through what love is not before you can truly appreciate what love is. It is in the heartbreak, the betrayal, the loneliness, and the self-deception that we begin to sharpen our understanding of love’s true essence.

For many of us, love first appears as a mirage. We mistake attachment for love, possession for devotion, and validation for connection. We enter relationships believing that love is something to be earned, bartered, or proven. We grasp at affection, hoping it will fill the unspoken voids within us, only to find that the more we chase, the further it seems to drift away.

I have known love in its most conditional form, a love that came with requirements, with expectations, with a ledger of debts and obligations. I’ve mistaken intensity for intimacy, thinking that passion and chaos were signs of something profound. I’ve seen love used as a currency of control, where affection was given and withdrawn as a means of power rather than a gift freely offered. And in those moments, I was certain it was love.

But then, when those relationships unraveled, when the illusion collapsed, I was left to examine the wreckage. What was it that had failed? If it was love, why had it been so painful? Why did it feel more like loss than fulfillment?

It was in those ruins that I began to see the truth: what I had called love had been everything but. Love is not about possession, nor is it about completing one another. Love does not demand that we become someone else to be worthy of it. It requires no expectations. It does not measure, weigh, or bargain. Love, in its truest form, is an offering, a space where we are fully seen and accepted, not despite our imperfections, but because of them.

The contrast between what love is and what love is not is what makes the experience of real love so profound. Once we have been through the shadows, once we have felt the weight of loves absence, we can finally recognize the light when it appears. We learn that love is not in grand gestures, but in quiet consistency. It is not in being needed, but in being chosen freely, again and again. It is not in losing ourselves for another, but in finding someone with whom we can be wholly ourselves.

Looking back, I do not regret the false loves, the misguided pursuits, the painful lessons. They were necessary. They were the fire that burned away my illusions, the storms that stripped me down to my truth. They taught me to stop seeking love in places it did not exist. They prepared me to recognize, and more importantly, to receive love when it finally arrived in its truest form.

So, if you find yourself in the midst of love that feels like struggle, love that confuses more than it comforts, love that leaves you feeling empty rather than whole, know that you are not lost. You are learning. You are being refined. You are living through what love is not so that one day, when real love stands before you, you will know it. And you will cherish it.