What Does Love Look Like?

There is an ideal — a philosophy, if you will — that I have always stood on with my son that says, “If I don’t speak to you that way, then no one else should either. If I wouldn’t say something like that to you, then no one else should.” This, which is no longer much of a reminder, was once a regular part of our conversations to combat the atrocities found in his adolescent interactions — including, at times, those with adults. All of it resulted in conversations where I had to remind my son of who he is and who he is not; his capabilities and his importance, while highlighting the many beautiful and unique qualities he has. Then, asking him to question his own beliefs about himself. “Do you think this about you?” “Do you have those qualities?” And finally, questioning whether it was something I would ever say to him.

When necessary, other conversations were coupled with my using more colorful

language to gather an understanding with those of certain ages who found such menacing behavior appropriate. The idea was to reassure him — through our own relationship — of what kindness, support, protection, and love should look like. Understanding that the expectation is not that everyone will love you in a familial sense, but that there are commonalities that exist between familial love and basic respect. While this has been a deeply ingrained part of my relationship with my son, it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I began to hold myself to the same parallel, when I needed to answer the question, “What does love look like?”

I understand that depending on how you grew up, what was modeled in front of you, the culmination of your social interactions, and your foundational beliefs — all of it can impact the way love can and does look for you. And even with the same circumstances, it varies from person to person. Not having had the healthiest model of love through my formative years, by the book it would be expected that my expectation of how love should look and feel would be disfigured — and it was. Pairing that with the need to believe that some sort of magical love was waiting somewhere to find me, and a belief that any relationship was likely not going to work — voilà, I had an unhealthy attachment style. Anything after that could almost be guaranteed as dysfunctional. And how do you even begin to try to fix that — it’s so rooted?

It is the way that personal relationships succeed or fail, cultivate or empty, give me a sense of safety or leave me exposed that determines for me where love exists. My love discoveries — or lack thereof — only seemed to occur after the relationship had ended. Almost always leaving me with a sense of immense guilt, the feeling of gullibility, betrayal, or even being blindsided. While I often fell victim to the infamous notion of seeing potential and believing the good in people, I failed miserably at protecting myself. I failed to protect my own heart, to protect the wounds I was already struggling to heal. I failed to believe what I had been shown — though in more cases than I’d like to admit, what I was shown was a lie.

In other instances, I overlooked quirks, inconsistencies, and passive disrespect overlaid with smiles and passed off as jokes at my expense, minimizing them as nothing more than an “it wasn’t meant that way” moment. When in reality, it was meant that way. I overlooked random catty attitudes and energy shifts that always seemed to occur at my high-spirited sharing of a much-needed winning moment. I overlooked the side-eyes and evil glances I caught when it was suspected that I wasn’t looking. And I overlooked the moments when those I needed weren’t available during my own distress.

In hindsight, I questioned that. More than questioning their behaviors, I questioned my own.

Why did you ignore those behaviors.

Why the multiple chances.

Why keep sharing when your win will be diminished by their desire for your failure.

Why won’t you really look at why you push down what you already know.

Then the moment of truth and clarity…

…because setting boundaries and standing up for myself means that I will be alone.

It means that the people I’d like to think are in my corner will show and prove that they aren’t. It means that my corner will be empty. My suspicions will be confirmed — that they genuinely don’t like me, and some of them actually despise me. I’ll see that in some of those most cherished relationships, love doesn’t exist — it never did. But what does love look like then? Because I was alone. I was seeing in real time what I was fearing.

When I began to answer the question of what love looks like, I naturally went back to my roots, my faith. Love is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful — and all the things in 1 Corinthians 13:4. By second nature, I thought about all the ways I could be better to meet the biblical criteria for showing love, not even considering that I belonged on the receiving end of the passage. Receiving has long been a hard concept for me — which explains so many of the one-sided relationships I had… all of them.

I realized in the moments of clarity around this part of my journey that while I was practicing the art of love toward others — in the sense of what I thought it should be — I wasn’t practicing it toward me. Somehow, I realized that most of my relationships were a reflection of how I had been treating myself. So I decided that I was going to be kinder to me, give me more grace. Instead of giving passes to people who were comfortable disrespecting me, I gave those passes to me and became harder with people who enjoyed the more passive me. I changed what my role was going to be. I decided to protect me. I decided I was going to give to me what I had always given to others. I was going to love me.

My answer to the question of how I begin to fix it is that I didn’t try to fix it — at least not in the sense that one would think. I looked at me. At how I had shown up for others and decided to show up for me. I took a walk down some of the darkest halls of my memory, identifying those quirks I let fly. I looked at the sly and disrespectful comments I let pass, the moments I felt I needed to prove that I was enough, the moments where no one showed up for me — and I sat in it. I sat in it for a while. I mourned the rejection and the people associated with the varying situations. I felt it. All of it — deeply. And it hurt like hell.

And when I was tired of mourning it, I let go of it — at least the parts I could on my own. The rest I began to lose as I moved forward while refusing to go back. I couldn’t fix it; I could only choose to live free of all the failed relationships I had been carrying — both the self‑inflicted and the imposed.

On the outside, it looked like me saying “no” when asked to do things I didn’t want to do — and not giving an explanation. Refraining from providing an explanation is still sometimes difficult. It looked like me defending myself unapologetically and severing ties at the first indication of disrespect. It looked like not giving second chances when I felt violated. It was understanding who I was dealing with and not dismissing it at the first flag that appeared. It even looked like me randomly choosing to end relationships with no warning and no explanation — just removing any access.

I was alone, and I knew I would be. But I was okay — actually better than expected. For the first time, I was clear. My mind, my heart, and my spirit felt clear. I recognized my own energy and thoughts. They were no longer convoluted and muddied by a melting pot of feelings and emotions that I couldn’t make out. The gaping holes that were pouring out my energy were sealed, and distant familiar energies that were reminders of traumas past had dissipated. I noticed I was more decisive in my decision-making. I felt considerably more content and thankful. I began to be comfortable in the silence of solitude. There is a different kind of peace there.

The more time I spent in solitude, the easier it became for me to identify my own feelings from projections. Spiritual experiences became clearer, and I no longer had any desire for things from my past. It was there that I began to discover me.

So… what does love look like?

Love looks like me.