Part I

We often ask, “what is love?”. Some would say it’s when you feel the intense, burning passion. Some would argue that it’s actually when it feels like home, safe and secure. So the conclusion is that love is subjective. So how do we define love? Is it from experience? Is it through what other people tell us how it should be? So how do we even know when we are in love?

The journey to figure that out wasn’t easy for me. I’m fairly certain it’s usually the case for most. Some had success in love so early on and so easily, usually at first try. Some, they only found the prince after they have kissed a few toads. For some, even after they have been on a relentless search for the right one, putting themselves out there, and putting in effort, love never found them somehow. So soulmate is not real? What about the red string theory? A thread of fate that often leads individuals to each other if they are destined to be together, no matter the destination and the circumstances. It is widely believed in East Asia. According to that myth, each and every one of us is supposed to have someone made for us. Then what about for those who are still looking for love in their 70s, haven’t yet lost hope for true love? Do they not have the same fair chance of a soulmate? Or it’s just not time yet? How is it fair then?

Allow me to share what I think is love. I love to love. I always chased it, someone you can call yours, confide in and talk with endlessly for hours, someone you can go home to at the end of the day, someone you can hug just because, someone you can call just because you’re feeling a little blue and just want to hear their voice. For someone who constantly yearned for it, did I have the best luck in it? No, I didn’t. Finding someone to love was one thing, getting them to accept your love was a completely different story, and finding someone that can love you how you want to be loved is almost impossible that you have 0.001% of chance. Finding a love that matches your love is pure work.

Relationships often teach you more about yourself than your partner, your triggers, your soft-spots, and what ticks you. First relationship, it will teach you about what you want and what you don’t want in love and slowly learn to recognise your non-negotiables. Often, you suffer, unless you’re one of the lucky ones where it worked out for you the first try. If you have no traumas or lessons assigned to you to learn in life, it will be your happy ever after. If you’re like me, with a lot of assignments and worksheets to complete before I can get my prince charming, you are going to get thrown a lot of lessons until you actually learn.

After years of looking for it, I realised that I chased the kind of love that wasn’t for me but thought I needed. To me, love was when I had to work for it. I only found it worthy if I had to do the convincing, the chasing, and work for approval from them. That means I only attracted emotionally avoidant men. The reward, which is them committing to me, felt more fulfilling because I knew I worked hard for it. If they made it too easy, I didn’t feel the passion nor the love. I only noticed the pattern after I went through 2 failed long-term relationships and multiple failed talking stages.

My first relationship, I was basically just a good company with certain benefits and a label to him. I was lonely, so I just appreciated the company he provided. Slowly, I started to realise that I needed more, more than just empty words, just someone to waste time with and more than just having someone I can call mine. That relationship lasted for one year. I had a stress-induced hair loss. I settled for it way too long even though I knew I wasn’t happy with him. Every time I tried to communicate how we could work on it together, he would shut down and ignore me and the next day, he would act like nothing happened while I was losing sleep. I was crying almost every day in the shower, asking myself why he couldn’t just try to understand me, if I was really just being emotional. You might be wondering, why I didn’t just leave. Perhaps, it was because I believed I deserved it. I believed that I was the problem. The main reason was I didn’t have any self-esteem.

So I worked on myself. I tried to learn more about myself, why I was okay with that kind of treatment towards me when if it were my friend in my shoes, I would have told them to leave them straight away and questioned them furiously if they were that stupid to let a stranger treat them like shit.

I learned after a lot of retrospection, I learned that I was just scared to be alone. I didn’t want to be abandoned. I didn’t feel whole on my own. I only felt complete when I had someone with me, it didn’t matter if they were good to me or not. I didn’t feel that I deserved the kind of love I wanted. Slowly but gradually, I had to learn that I was actually worthy. I wasn’t the problem but I just wasn’t getting my needs met. I started to react less and less until one day, I ended things with him and I never looked back. He thought I would go back as I always did, he came back to tell me exactly that and I flipped him off. That was one lesson learned.

I had a checklist I made right after my first relationship ended. My next partner had to be kind, communicative, prioritise me, and listen to me. He would have to make me feel loved, cherished and secure. Basically everything I wanted to feel in my first relationship. In my second relationship, which I got into pretty quickly after my first relationship ended, he checked all the boxes. So I thought he was the one. It was perfect with him. He was soft, vulnerable, and made me feel so valued. He made feel seen and communicated with me so gently and he made me feel seen.

That was until he started having second thoughts about us and wanted to take a step back. So I left, and I was proud of myself for not trying to beg him to think otherwise. I was genuinely happy during the very little time we spent together. I didn’t talk to him for a while until he started talking to me again. He still wasn’t sure of committing to me and because I missed him, I did what I was familiar with, I tried to convince him. So much for not begging him. Because he treated me so well, I was convinced he was worth fighting for. I told him I would wait for him until he was ready. Eventually, he was, but it was too little, too late. I wasn’t happy anymore as there was more resentment than love sometimes, but I still stayed for 3 more years.

All the boxes he checked in the beginning, one by one, it started to get unchecked. He started getting too comfortable and thought I would stay no matter what he did and how he treated me. In other words, he realised that I had no backbone.

I stuck to him all because I was terrified to be alone. I was settling because I didn’t want to be alone, not because I felt loved, seen, understood or happy. I never learned that I never had to fight for love and that if I had to, it just simply wasn’t for me. Not to say that you shouldn’t fight for the person that you actually love and that loves you. Do it for the right reasons. Don’t fight for love because you just want to feel loved or be chosen by them. Don’t fight for love because you feel the need to prove to yourself that you are worthy of love. Love is a beautiful thing but if you don’t know how to love right, it ruins you.