Love Is... and It Isn’t

I came across a quote recently: “She wanted someone to love and so she fell for herself” by r.h. sin. It made me stop and reflect. Those words unlocked memories I’ve rarely allowed myself to revisit. A time when I was constantly searching for love outside of myself, hoping that someone else could fill the gaps and heal the parts of me I hadn’t yet learned to nurture. I was looking for something in others that I needed to find within, but at the time, I didn’t know that. Those words reminded me just how far I’ve come.

For the longest time, I thought I knew what love was. You know the feeling. The rush of texts that make your heart skip, the calls that turn a bad day around and made everything feel lighter. He’d show up, always on time, always with a solution ready to solve whatever problem was stressing me out. Something broken? He’d fix it. Dinner? He’d make it. Laundry? He’d fold them. And in those moments, I convinced myself this was it. This was love. It was everything I thought love was supposed to look like. Honestly, who doesn’t want someone to step in and handle the chaos? And he was smart, so smart. The kind of smart that made me wonder how I hadn’t seen things as clearly as he did. He’d speak, and I’d be floored, thinking, Wow, how did I miss that? With him, I felt like I had someone who could take care of everything… my heart, my home, my life.

And then there was the tenderness. After we made love, he’d bathe me like I was something fragile, something sacred. He’d wrap me up in a towel so gently, and for a while, I was sure: This is love. The care, the attention, the tenderness… it checked all the boxes I thought I deserved. I believed this was it, that this was what love looked like. Because really, who does that if they’re not in love?

But then, things started to change. The love I thought I felt? It slowly began to feel… different. It wasn’t all at once. It never is. At first, it was little things. A comment about my clothes—“You’re wearing that out?”—and I’d brush it off as him being protective. But over time, that protection began to feel more like control. The phone calls I once looked forward to started feeling more like check-ins. Suddenly, I felt like I needed permission to exist outside of him.

Here’s the part that still hurts to admit: I started to shrink. Not physically, but in every other way that matters. I stopped being me. I silenced my opinions, I dimmed my light, I swallowed my joy. I became smaller, quieter. Because deep down, I didn’t want to be too much. I didn’t want to upset the balance. I stopped celebrating my wins, kept my voice low, and tucked away the pieces of myself that might make him uncomfortable. I traded in my boldness for peace that wasn’t even real.

But still, I stayed. I stayed because I kept chasing the version of him I met in the beginning. The one who made me feel seen, safe, held. I kept telling myself, We can get back to that. But the truth was, that version of him wasn’t coming back. I knew it, but I wasn’t ready to admit it.

Things got worse. The arguments became more frequent, and somehow, I was always the one in the wrong. My feelings? They didn’t matter anymore. And when I finally found the courage to ask if he was seeing someone else (because let’s be real, my gut had been screaming at me for months) his response hit me like a punch to the chest. “If I was cheating, I’d lie to you about it.” No denial. No explanation. Just a cold, detached truth that made me feel small and invisible. And yet, I stayed.

I stayed because I wanted so badly to believe that the love I felt in the beginning was real. That if I held on just a little longer, we’d find our way back to each other. But here’s the thing: the truth was right there in front of me the whole time. My instincts had been right, but I buried them under layers of hope and fear and denial. I wasn’t ready to face what leaving would mean.

And leaving wasn’t easy. It wasn’t some grand, dramatic moment where everything clicked and I walked out the door with my head held high. It was a slow unraveling. One painful realization after another until I finally understood that I had been letting someone else’s version of love define me.

And that’s where the real work began. Admitting that I had a role in all of this. Not in his actions, but in my own choices. I chose to stay. I chose to ignore the red flags. I chose to make myself smaller, quieter, to keep the peace. I convinced myself that staying meant love, even when staying was slowly erasing me. It would’ve been easy to sit in that space of victimhood, to point the finger at him and tell myself it was all his fault. But if I stayed there, I would’ve missed the most important lesson… about me and the power I have in my own life.

I had to learn the difference between love and attachment. I had to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that just because someone makes you feel good for a while doesn’t mean they’re good for you. That was my breakthrough. Love isn’t about endurance. It’s not about shrinking yourself down or sacrificing your happiness to make someone else feel comfortable. Love doesn’t look like walking on eggshells or second-guessing yourself at every turn.

The real strength wasn’t in staying, hoping that one day he’d change. The real strength was in choosing myself. In realizing that the love I was chasing from him was the love I needed to give to myself.

I had to unlearn the lie that love is something you have to fight for. Especially when the fight is draining you. Love, reallove, doesn’t ask you to be less. It doesn’t come with conditions or make you feel like you have to earn it by sacrificing parts of who you are.

So now, I ask myself: What does love feel like for me? And here’s what I know for sure: love feels like safety. It feels like freedom. It feels like being able to exhale after holding your breath for way too long. And that kind of love? It starts from within.

The truth is, the person I was searching for, the one I thought could save me, she was already inside of me. And after everything, I finally chose her. I’ve fallen in love with myself, and it has been the most beautiful, powerful journey of my life.

How did I get here? Therapy, y’all. A lot of it. And I stopped shrinking to fit into someone else’s idea of who I should be. I started setting boundaries and (this was the hard part) actually honoring them. I forgave myself for the things I used to hold against me. I learned to show up for myself in the ways I’ve always shown up for other people.

Falling in love with myself isn’t some final destination. It’s a choice I make every single day. And it’s the best choice I’ve ever made.

So now, I want to know: How are you choosing yourself?