BTWN LVRS

Before We Learned How to Love

Why Love, Love, Love

I chose to begin with Love, Love, Love because most of us believe we understand love, until experience reveals what we were never taught.

When we have not fully examined ourselves, pain can make love even more confusing. We may carry old wounds, inherited beliefs, and survival-shaped patterns into relationships without realizing how deeply they affect what we give, accept, expect, and call love.

I wanted to write from the heart about matters of the heart so we can move, collectively, toward love that is healthy, honest, and authentic.

I can write about this deeply because it is a full-circle moment for me. I am living inside a loving relationship that has remained healthy and fulfilling for years, with genuine friendship at its foundation. But… I definitely didn’t start there, that story will unfold throughout our time together.

I do not want to share only the trauma, confusion, chaos, and pain that can accompany love. I also want to show what becomes possible when we address the whole human being, not merely the person’s relationship status.

Because healthier love is not created by getting into a relationship.

It is created by people who are learning to know themselves, honor one another, and live love more fully.

Most of us met love before we met ourselves.

It arrived through fairy tales, family stories, playground rules, television, music, religion, neighborhood wisdom, and adults who were often teaching us what they had been taught, whether it had worked for them or not.

Girls were frequently handed the romance.

The dress.

The prince.

The proposal.

The wedding.

A carefully decorated promise that being chosen would begin the life worth waiting for.

Boys were often handed the adventure.

Brotherhood.

Competition.

Sports.

Independence.

The freedom to explore before eventually settling down, preferably after becoming successful enough to provide for a family they had not necessarily been taught how to know emotionally.

Girls learned to imagine the relationship.

Boys learned to imagine the life they would have before it.

Then everyone grew up, found one another attractive, and entered relationships as though we had received the same instructions.

We had not.

Some women were taught that love meant giving more, understanding more, forgiving more, and remaining loyal through almost anything.

Some men were taught that love meant providing, protecting, staying loyal, and avoiding emotional dependence at all costs.

Both may have arrived sincerely prepared to love. They may even have absorbed many of the same beliefs about love in childhood, yet still feel uncertain about how to communicate, receive, and apply those beliefs within an adult relationship.

One was offering emotional attentiveness.

The other was offering structural stability.

One said, “Talk to me.”

The other said, “I’m still here.”

One thought intimacy meant sharing an inner world.

The other thought commitment meant never leaving the outer one.

Then both felt unappreciated.

That is the peculiar thing about love: people can offer it honestly and still fail to deliver it in a form the other person can recognize.

We were often taught roles before relationship.

How to be chosen.

How to provide.

How to remain desirable.

How to avoid appearing needy.

How to become a good wife or a respectable husband.

Much less time was spent teaching us how to become a person who could know themselves, communicate clearly, tolerate discomfort, remain curious, repair harm, and allow another human being to remain fully visible.

Perhaps that was considered less romantic.

No fairy tale ends with the prince saying, “Before we marry, I would like to discuss my conflict-avoidance pattern.”

No ballroom erupts in applause because the princess has finally learned to state a need directly instead of hoping he interprets her silence correctly.

But these are the places where love becomes livable.

Because attraction can introduce two people.

It cannot teach them how to understand one another.

Commitment can keep two people together.

It cannot make them friends.

And love can be sincere while the relationship remains unsafe, lonely, confusing, or painfully unequal.

Somewhere along the way, the conversation also became increasingly transactional.

What do you bring to the table?

Who leads?

Who submits?

Who pays?

Who needs whom less?

Who has the most options?

Who can leave with the smallest visible wound?

People began approaching intimacy like opposing corporations negotiating a merger while privately preparing for litigation.

It is difficult to build tenderness while keeping score.

The true foundation is simpler, though not necessarily easier.

Know yourself.

Respect the humanity of another person.

Tell the truth.

Listen for understanding.

Remain curious.

Take responsibility for your impact.

Repair what you damage.

And do not ask love to survive where friendship, honesty, and mutual regard have never been planted.

This does not mean men and women are enemies, or that every difference between us is a social conspiracy.

It means many of us arrived in adulthood carrying incomplete and sometimes opposing lessons, and then blamed one another for not instinctively knowing what neither had been taught.

That is where Love, Love, Love begins.

Not with perfect people.

Not with men on one side and women on the other.

With human beings attempting one of life’s most complicated tasks using inherited instructions, private fears, sincere intentions, and occasionally very questionable judgment.

We will examine what we were taught.

What we misunderstood.

What we repeated.

What we can learn now.

And because human beings become especially funny when romance is involved, we will laugh too.

Love may come naturally.

Living it well, with ourselves, with life, and with one another, takes practice.

Fortunately, we are still allowed to learn.

–Tee