To Love is To Be Understood

I don’t usually engage in dating discourse. I find it tedious, repetitive, and overwhelmingly stupid. But it’s everywhere. You can’t open your phone without being assaulted by someone’s half-baked opinion on love, relationships, or “red flags.” The sheer volume of it is maddening, and the lack of self-awareness is almost impressive. People argue endlessly about what they want, what they deserve, and what others owe them, without stopping to ask if they even understand themselves, let alone anyone else. It’s not just tiresome, it’s pathetic.

To be understood, that’s the ultimate test of love. Not compatibility. Not shared interests, not a "good job", not matching love languages or any of the other nonsense people cling to in their desperation. It’s about someone looking at you, seeing everything you are, everything you aren’t, and saying, I understand. Nothing else matters.

But this fundamental truth is completely absent from modern dating discourse. Instead, we get endless swiping, curated bios, and the delusional belief that if you just meet enough people, try hard enough, or optimize yourself enough, you’ll stumble upon love. What a sad lie people tell themselves.

People treat love like a numbers game, like it’s a statistical inevitability. It’s not. Love isn’t something you can “work” at, and it’s certainly not something you can hack. It’s chaos. It’s rare. And most people talking about it don’t even deserve it because they approach it with checklists and entitlement, as if the universe owes them a soulmate just for having a Hinge profile.

If you have a list of what you’re looking for, you’ve already lost. It doesn’t work like that. A checklist is a defense mechanism, a way to avoid vulnerability by reducing another human being to a series of traits. It’s a mockery of what love is supposed to be. If you’re that person, you’re not searching for a partner, you’re searching for an accessory. You don’t deserve love; you deserve to be alone.

For these people, dating has become a grim performance. Coffee dates, dinner reservations, awkward small talk. It’s all laughable theatre. None of it is real. No one actually wants to be there, but they go through the motions because they’re terrified of solitude. And for what? Most of these connections amount to nothing more than mutual masturbation. If you don’t genuinely care about finding something deeper, you might as well skip the charade and hire a hooker. At least that’s honest.

Ask yourself this: how many people have you truly wanted to commit to? Not because you were lonely, or because you felt you had to, but because the thought of not being with them felt like a stab to the heart. How many people have actually understood you, not just your quirks or habits, but the full, messy truth of who you are?

For me, the answer is simple: if someone doesn’t understand me, I want nothing to do with them, let alone go on a date with them. Anything less would be a betrayal, not just to myself, but to the essence of who I am. To settle for less than understanding would mean denying my spirit, suffocating the part of me that demands connection on the deepest level. I would rather walk through life alone than share it with someone who sees me as a collection of traits instead of a whole, contradictory being.

This is why we are inherently drawn to those who seem like us. It’s not shallow; it’s instinctive. We are all, in some way, looking for ourselves in others. We gravitate toward people who dress like us, who share our flaws, who reflect our souls back to us. To see yourself in someone else is to feel understood in the most primal way. It’s recognition.

If you’re lucky you might find someone who truly gets you. Someone who doesn’t need you to explain yourself. Someone who doesn’t flinch at your contradictions. If you find that, hold onto it. Even if it doesn’t last, even if it falls apart, you’ll know you’ve experienced something most people never will.

Because love isn’t infinite. It isn’t guaranteed. How many true loves can you expect in a lifetime? One is already a miracle. Even if it doesn’t last, even if it breaks you, be grateful. Be grateful that it happened at all. And after that, refuse to accept anything less.

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