We don’t lack love, we lack definition
If to be loved is to be seen, who are we really seeing?

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This is not a dissertation on love or romance. This is not an analysis of love based on biology, sociohistorical philosophy, or politics. I don’t have the time nor do I feel emboldened enough to dissect love, especially when others have done it for me. Truthfully, I don’t know what this is. But I do feel compelled, in my opinion, to diagnose how our modern interpretation—or lack thereof—of love ails us, stifles our human and interpersonal potential, and creates endless cycles of grief.

I’m not a love diagnostician. But I’m also not afraid to say that many people I know are… categorically bad boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, and friends. Women I know are confused, burdened, their existence unnurtured by the great liberator that was supposed to be love! We’re not bad lovers out of malice or intention, but out of design. 

An obsession with “love” permeates our digital and real-life worlds. Why wouldn’t it? I for one am young, zesty, smart, beautiful, and too full of life to not be open to the whimsies of romance! Yet, our culture valorizes romantic love, socially rewards it, and then has the audacity to accept its validity only on the strict basis that it meets standards and aesthetics set out by patriarchal and colonial ideas. The media feeds us sanitized relationships between pretty people; music lyricizes love as a desirable addiction; and love is a commodity under the economic logic of neoliberal capitalism. I’m tired of living in a generation that occupies so much of its time with the feeling of love and desire, yet struggles to actually build and keep connections. 

We love to love the idea of love—we love to desire it and flail in its pool of liquid dopamine and oxytocin—but when it comes down to it, some of us are bad lovers. We’re unhappy and discouraged by the one thing that matters most. But even though patriarchy, colonialism, and our capitalist agendas have conspired to fracture how we experience love, I want to focus on how our lack of a working definition of love—as opposed to a bundle of feelings—affects our relationships. 

We’ve romanticized love to the point of obscurity, to the point where many of us don’t know how to be a good lover or what love truly is because we—by education and observation, by design—have learned to see love as something reduced down to a set of vague emotions and socially ascribed meaning in actions. Our desires are partly manufactured. 

I believe that the central problem is that we seem to be lacking a definition of love that can actually be practiced and enforced—defined by intentions and patterns of behavior, and not by emotions. Love is natural, honesty, fidelity, patience, kindness, respect, endurance, someone who is invested in mutual growth, love is well-intentioned desire, love is this, that, love is, love, love—love is so much that sometimes, it feels like nothing at all. 

In a scramble to find a definition that serves us, many people—the writers and poets mainly—say that to love someone is to know someone, to see them wholly and not as individual pieces that you individually love. I know you, I remember you is somehow more intimate than I love you. I think this is true. Of course, you can’t claim to love someone if you don’t know them—if you do, then whatever you feel is not love and I think we all know that.

But this idea too of knowing someone in all their complexity and fullness, especially when the very nature of selfhood is dynamic, and epistemically and emotionally inaccessible to everyone except the subject is… romantic and half the story at best. I’d be flustered too if my ex from three years ago still remembered what brand of toothpaste I used as a child or exactly why I might like Before Sunrise (1994) over Before Sunset (2004). He knows me, and maybe at some point, he loved me. But is that love? Maybe.

But my definition of love sees love as something actionable, something I can hold myself accountable too. Knowing someone deeply is a wonderful gift and something that takes work, but it’s ultimately too intellectual for me. In other words, don’t be fooled into thinking a guy really loves you because he remembered your childhood brand of toothpaste or why you’ll hate that movie over the other. Even with deeper things, a similar sentiment holds true.

I don’t mean to devalue the art of knowing someone—of peeling back their onion-like layers of insecurity and complexity with warmth and care—just because it’s impossible to know someone fully. Instead, I believe we should learn to see love as the daily work of persisting in accepting all forms and versions of that person—even in argument, in inconvenience, in distaste, in the cracks of life where it feels like you don’t know them anymore. Love is taking the patience, time, intention, and commitment to understand new versions of someone as they emerge, as life remakes you and them in concert.

For me, I think love ultimately boils down less to being fully understood and more to being genuinely accepted as someone who exists in the present. Not clung to as a past version of who I was, and not constantly measured against an idealized future version of who I could become. Love looks like recognizing who someone is, where they’ve come from, and what they desire, while still respecting their autonomy and capacity to change.

Love is the warmth and practice of knowing that I’ll make an effort to relearn their body and mind even after it has been changed by the throes of life. I love you because I am constantly curious about you without pretense or predispositions. I love you because I’m willing to change you and be changed by you. 

Like I said, a lot of love is miscredited, mis-ascribed, and misunderstood by how our society—institutions, education, media, stories, generational teachings—propagates and validates love. Love as merely a feeling to be felt rather than something nurtured through action over time has, in my not-so-original opinion, done damage. The point is that our collective and generational confusion with love is by design, and therefore, can be changed by our actions and how we show up in our personal relationships. To practice love as a function of consistency is not easy because identity and experience is so dynamic.

But I think it helps when we clear out the clutter and noise of love—the rules, expectations, and previously dysfunctional iterations of this so-called thing that we’ve internalized. In doing so, with a dose of courage and self-clarity, does a more honest and healthier vision of love emerge. When we redefine love for what it is, we can begin to filter out the noise and reach for something more truthful. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a girl who writes.

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