3 feelings you’re confusing for love

Relief is not love. When someone texts you back after days or hours of not texting you back, your whole body relaxes. That's not love. That's your nervous system calming down because the threat that used to exist was stopped.

You were anxious and now you're not and that's why you feel relief. And your brain labels that as happiness, but it's not happiness. It's a lack of stress. Familiarity is also not love.

If you've been with someone for a long time and leaving them feel scary, that's also not love. That's you holding on tight to your comfort zone. That's your brain preferring the known over the unknown. You're not staying because you want to stay.

You're staying because the fear of meeting the unknown is greater than the comfort of the current situation. And that's not a relationship, that's inertia. Needing someone is not love. If you cannot be alone by yourself.

If being without them makes you feel empty. If the only reason why you want a relationship is so that you can fill your time, your alone time with another person's presence, that's not love, that's dependency. And dependency feels intense and all consuming and devouring, which is exactly what movies taught us love should look and feel like. But desperation is not devotion.

And desperation is definitely not love. So, how does love actually look like? Love is choosing someone on the day that you don't need them at all. The day that you're fine on your own.

The day that you could walk away and you'd be okay with it. And you look at them and you think, "I don't need you, but I want you here. I choose you here." The wanting you here free from anxiety, free from dependency, free from comfort, free from any type of fear, that is the real thing.

Maybe it's not love, but it's some part of it. Everything else is just your nervous system and your brain playing tricks on you.