How to Love
Walking through the streets this week, love was impossible to miss.
Red roses stacked high at every corner store, the scent sweet and overwhelming. Heart-shaped balloons swaying outside cafés. Restaurant tables set for two, candlelight flickering in the window. The clink of wine glasses, the soft sounds of intimate conversation, the careful expressions of romance.
It’s the same every year. And yet, something about the overwhelming presence of it all always makes me pause. Not because I don’t believe in love, but because the version of love being celebrated feels so… specific. The kind that fits neatly into a dinner reservation, a bouquet of flowers, an exchange of words and gestures that say, I love you, and you love me back.
I think about the times I’ve said “I love you” in a relationship. What I was really saying was:
“I love the way you make me feel.”
“I love that you see me, that you choose me.”
“I love what we have built together, the life we share.”
Nothing about that is wrong. But it is transactional, whether I want to admit it or not. There is a lot of “me” in this. There is an exchange happening—love, given and received, measured in gestures, presence, and care.
It’s easy to forget that love doesn’t have to be this way. That love can exist without being returned.
I think about my grandmother. I have loved her my entire life, but it wasn’t a love that needed validation. It wasn’t about what she gave me, what she said, or how she made me feel. It just was.
There’s something freeing about that kind of love—love that doesn’t need to be acknowledged to exist. It isn’t about being seen. It isn’t about being chosen. It isn’t about filling a space within myself.
It’s the kind of love that expects nothing.
There are other loves like this.
Love for a childhood friend I haven’t spoken to in years, but who still holds a place in my heart.
Love for a city I no longer live in, but that still feels like mine.
Love for the ocean, steady and unchanging, even though it has never once loved me back.
These forms of love are quieter. They don’t come with grand gestures or celebration days. They aren’t the ones that get written into movies or turned into marketing campaigns. But they are, in many ways, the purest.
Most things I love still give me something in return—comfort, security, a sense of belonging. But I wonder, how many things do I love purely for their existence?
Love, in its truest form, is given, not traded. It is free of attachment, desire, or expectation. It asks for nothing. And maybe, that is what makes it special.
This week, love has been everywhere. But the love I’ve been thinking about most is the love that doesn’t need to be returned.
Some love is seen. Some love is returned. And some love, the purest love, simply exists.
And that is how I learned to love.
