When Love Wasn’t Really Love

There’s a moment in healing

that most people don’t admit out loud—

the moment you realise

you weren’t loved…

you were needed.

And you kept calling it love

because the alternative

was too humiliating to face.

I see this in so many people I work with.

And I’ve had to face it in myself.

Sometimes the truth doesn’t land

until you stop being useful to someone.

Only then do you see

how little there was beneath the surface.

And that’s what hurts—

not the ending,

but the clarity that walks in after it.

Because there are people

who love the feeling of you.

Your warmth.

Your steadiness.

Your emotional availability.

But not you.

You know who they are

because the moment you stop glowing,

they dim without hesitation.

And then there’s the hardest category—

the people who love

what you do for them.

The emotional labour.

The listening.

The soothing.

The constant adjusting.

The way you quietly hold their chaos

so they never have to meet it themselves.

That isn’t love.

That’s dependency

dressed up as connection.

And the body always knows.

It tightens around them.

It anticipates their shifts.

It works overtime.

It forgets its own needs.

It shrinks itself

to maintain the peace.

And the shame arrives later—

when you realise you kept giving

not because you were generous,

but because you were terrified

that without your usefulness,

you’d be abandoned.

Most heartbreak doesn’t come

from being unloved.

It comes from recognising

you were loved for the wrong reasons.

If this truth hits something tender—

if you’ve been the steady one,

the strong one,

the emotionally capable one,

the one who keeps the room from collapsing—

you’re not alone in that ache.

This is the terrain I hold

inside my 1:1 spaces:

people learning, slowly and painfully,

to stop mistaking their usefulness

for their worth.

People finally making room

for a different kind of love—

one that doesn’t fall apart

when they stop performing.

Because when you create that space,

you invite in the ones

who love the real you—

the undone you—

the you who isn’t holding everything together.

And that kind of love

doesn’t disappear

when you finally put the weight down.