What It Means to Be Loved Properly
What It Means to Be Loved Properly
Divorce taught me that the deepest love begins with coming home to yourself—not with becoming perfectly healed.
So many of us stay in relationships we are no longer tending.
We don’t do the work to repair them, but we don’t find the courage to leave, either. We remain somewhere in between—sharing a life without truly sharing ourselves.
Sometimes staying feels easier than asking the question that might change everything: Are we still choosing each other, or have we simply stopped choosing at all?
A relationship cannot live on history alone. Love needs attention. It needs honesty, curiosity and the willingness to keep meeting the person beside you as they grow. And when that is no longer possible, love may ask for a different kind of courage—the courage to step away.
Finding My Way Back
After my divorce, I learned that before I could be loved properly, I had to come home to myself.
I married young, before I had the chance to discover who I was on my own. When that marriage ended, I needed time—not to find someone new, but to find myself again.
I had to learn what brought me joy when there was no partner beside me. I had to make my own plans, sit with my own quiet and build a life that felt full without waiting for someone else to complete it.
Little by little, solitude stopped feeling like an absence. It began to feel like belonging.
I discovered the pleasure of my own company. I learned that peace can be passionate, that a life can be soft and expansive even when it is mine alone.
And somewhere along the way, I came home.
Not perfectly healed. Not unbroken. Not finished. Just rooted enough in myself to know that whatever came next, I would not have to disappear inside it.
A Different Kind of Confidence
That journey has given me a different kind of confidence about love.
I know what I want now. I communicate more clearly. I understand my needs, my boundaries and the kind of partnership I am willing to build.
More importantly, I think I finally know how to love properly.
Giving yourself to another person is something sacred. It should be treasured, never taken for granted. And while loving someone should never require abandoning yourself, honoring yourself also means honoring the person who has trusted you with their heart.
It means paying attention. It means saying what needs to be said before silence hardens into distance. It means treating their tenderness with care and expecting them to do the same with yours.
Being fully there.
Sitting across from one another at dinner and smiling for no particular reason. Curling up on the couch and feeling the warmth of their body beside mine. The quiet pleasure of knowing there is nowhere else either of us would rather be.
Sharing the world.
Adventures taken, meals shared and laughter that catches us by surprise.
Keeping the spark.
Sweet moments in bed, and others filled with passion, heat and desire.
To Keep Noticing Each Other
I imagine being enamored with the person I love—not because every day is effortless, but because I continue to notice them.
I want to care about their happiness and remain present when happiness feels far away. I want us to face the difficult things side by side, remembering that the problem is not one of us against the other. It is both of us, together, figuring it out.
I want a love that is alive enough to be examined. One where we can say, “Something feels different,” and turn toward each other instead of away. One where repair is not an admission of failure, but proof that what we have is worth tending.
To love someone properly is not to promise them a life without disappointment. It is to promise presence inside it. To stay curious about who they are becoming. To let them change—and to let yourself be changed by knowing them.
All in.
Loving has always been my gift. When I’m in, I’m all in. I show up with devotion, warmth and the desire to build something real.
Still whole.
Loving deeply does not mean losing myself. I can choose someone fully while continuing to choose myself, too.
In the past, I stayed all in until the wheels came off.
Now I understand that devotion is not measured by how long I can endure what is hurting me. Love is not proven through self-abandonment. It is built through honesty, reciprocity and the courage to face what is true.
That means speaking when something hurts. Repairing what can be repaired. Refusing to make a home inside resentment. And having the wisdom to recognize what cannot—or will not—be made whole.
I Don’t Have to Be Finished
There is something else I know now: I do not have to be completely healed and unbroken to find love again.
We talk so much about doing the work before we let anyone in—as if love only becomes available once every wound has closed, every fear has quieted and every part of our past has been neatly resolved.
But none of us arrives at love as a finished person.
Sometimes the person you have been hoping for appears while there are still pieces of your life you are trying to understand. Sometimes something extraordinary stands in front of you before you feel entirely ready to receive it.
Being a work in progress does not make me unworthy of a love that is real.
I don’t believe in becoming perfect for anyone. I believe in showing up honestly. In saying, “This is where I am. This is what I am still learning. And I am willing to meet you here.”
We are works in progress for our entire lives. There will always be another layer to understand, another pattern to unlearn, another way to grow. If we wait until we have it all figured out, we may wait forever—and miss something amazing while it is right in front of us.
So I will keep doing the work, but I will not use the work as a reason to hide from love. I will not confuse being unfinished with being unavailable. When something true arrives, I want to be brave enough to embrace it—even if I am still becoming.
This kind of love may not be easy to find. But I am no longer searching from a place of emptiness or urgency.
I have found joy on my own. I have made peace with where I am. I know now that a partner should add to a life I already love, not rescue me from one I have yet to claim.