There are only a handful of things in this world that feel as warm as loving and being loved. Perhaps that is where the idea of being in love begins. It carries with it the beautiful assumption that to be in love is to know both sides of the feeling: to love someone and to be loved by them.
But can love remain, love when we desire only its warmth, without ever tending to its fire?
Perhaps that is where the trouble begins, in a problem so quiet that we have almost forgotten to notice it.
There is a quiet epidemic of people who would rather simply be loved. Somewhere along the way, they have lost touch with the fine art of loving. They speak about love as though it is about giving, yet what they often mean is receiving. They have become so familiar with the things they want from love that they have forgotten to wonder what love might ask of them.
Because love has never been a one-way street.
It is the hand reaching out and the hand reaching back. It is the warmth you seek and the warmth you offer. It is someone making room for you in their heart, and you deciding, in return, to make room for them in yours. Love is, in fact, an action word.
To be loved is also to love. Love cannot simply be something that happens to us, a warm feeling that finds us and settles comfortably into our lives. It must move through us. It must find its way into our hands, our words, our patience, our presence. It is in the remembering, the forgiving, the staying, the choosing. In all those little acts that rarely make a sound, yet somehow tell another person, I see you, and I am here.
But what happens when everyone becomes so consumed with being loved that they forget to love?
Even in our daydreams, where nothing costs us anything, we seem to have an odd economy of love. We imagine being pursued, remembered, surprised, held. We imagine flowers, letters, long embraces and someone arriving at exactly the moment we need them. We imagine being chosen, again and again, by someone who could have chosen anyone. And yet, in this boundless world of our own making, we seldom imagine crossing the distance for someone else. Even imagination, where we are free to give without losing anything, finds us waiting to receive.
And so, sometimes, relationships become a peculiar kind of theatre.
One person performs. The other watches.
The one on the stage learns the lines by heart. He remembers the cues, tends to the lights, arrives before the curtain rises and stays long after it falls. The one in the seats simply watches. At first, every gesture feels remarkable. Then the performer grows tired, as performers eventually do, and the audience begins to wonder why the show is no longer as good as it used to be.
That is where things begin to fall apart.
I think this is one of the quieter troubles with modern dating, friendship and relationships. We have become exceptionally good at knowing how we want to be loved, but somehow less curious about how we love.
We know our love languages. We know our standards. We know what we deserve. We know what a partner should do, what they should say, how they should show up, how they should make us feel.
We have entire vocabularies for the love we expect.
But how often do we sit with the uncomfortable question of how we love another person?
Social media has made this especially visible. People speak endlessly about how they want to be loved, almost as though they are putting an advert in the paper. They describe the flowers they want, the messages they expect, the affection they crave, the kind of person they want to find.
But rarely do we hear people speak with the same tenderness about how they love.
Rarely does anyone say, “This is how I make someone feel loved.”
And perhaps that says more than we realise.
Everyone wants to be held.
Fewer people want to hold.
Everyone wants someone who will show up for them.
Fewer people ask whether they are willing to show up when the roles are reversed.
And perhaps that is the tragedy hiding in plain sight.
We have turned love into something we wait for, something we measure, something we evaluate. We watch for signs. We count the effort. We compare. We keep score.
But love was never meant to be a scoreboard. It was meant to be a meeting place.
A place where two people arrive with open hands, not clenched fists. A place where both people give something of themselves and, in doing so, become a little less alone.
Because love is not always found in the grand gesture. Sometimes it lives quietly in the ordinary. In remembering how someone takes their coffee. In asking if they got home safely. In listening to a story you have heard three times before because it matters to them. In choosing tenderness when pride would be easier.
Sometimes love is simply staying soft in a world that gives you plenty of reasons not to be.
Perhaps that is the fine art we are losing.
The art of giving without keeping score.
The art of noticing.
The art of showing up.
The art of loving someone beyond the beautiful feeling of being loved by them.
Because if everyone only wants to be loved, who will do the loving?
And maybe that is where love begins to disappear.
Not because people no longer desire it, but because everyone is waiting at the door for someone else to bring it in.
Someone has to open the door.
Someone has to reach across the table.
Someone has to give.
Someone has to love.