Perhaps because love was never something we were meant to demand. It was something we were meant to recognize, feel, and allow.
We live in an extraordinary age of access.
Hungry? Food can arrive at our doorstep.
Need something? We can order it with a click.
Want entertainment? Thousands of movies, songs, books, and conversations are waiting for us.
Need information? We can ask a question and receive an answer almost instantly.
We have become accustomed to getting things on demand.
And perhaps, without realizing it, we have begun expecting the same from love.
We want someone to love us.
We want our partner to make us feel special.
We want our children to appreciate everything we have done for them.
We want our friends to remember us.
We want our colleagues to value us.
We want our employees to respect us.
And an entire industry has emerged around teaching us how to make these things happen.
Say these five things and he will become more attached to you.
Do this and she will find you irresistible.
Buy this gift and make them feel loved.
Become this kind of leader and your employees will appreciate you.
Some of this advice may be useful. Relationships certainly require communication, consideration, generosity, and effort.
But I wonder whether we are sometimes trying to solve the wrong problem.
Because love is not Amazon Prime.
It cannot be ordered, guaranteed, or delivered according to our preferred schedule.
The Paradox of Looking for Love
The more desperately we seek evidence that someone loves us, the more dependent our experience of love becomes on someone else’s behavior.
Did they call?
Did they remember?
Did they compliment me?
Did they respond the way I hoped?
Did they appreciate what I did?
Did they choose me?
And slowly, love becomes a measurement system.
We begin keeping an invisible balance sheet.
When the other person behaves according to our expectations, we feel loved.
When they don’t, we feel unloved.
But perhaps the deeper question is not:
“How do I get more love?”
Perhaps it is:
“What prevents me from experiencing the love that already exists?”
That question changes everything.
Love Is Experienced From the Inside
When I wrote Relationships Matter, much of my exploration centered around awareness—our thoughts, feelings, expectations, interpretations, and the patterns we bring into relationships.
I still believe deeply in that.
But since writing the book, I have become increasingly interested in another part of this conversation:
the nervous system.
We don’t experience relationships only through our thoughts.
We experience them through our bodies.
A person whose inner system feels relatively safe may experience a delayed text simply as a delayed text.
Another person may experience the same silence as rejection.
A disagreement may feel like a disagreement to one person and abandonment to another.
A partner may offer genuine affection, yet something inside us may remain unable to fully receive it.
This doesn’t mean every relationship problem originates within us. There are relationships that are genuinely neglectful, unkind, manipulative, or unsafe, and recognizing that reality matters.
But there is another possibility worth exploring:
Sometimes love is being offered, but our internal state determines how much of it we can actually feel.
Perhaps Self-Love Is More Than Loving Yourself
We often talk about self-love as though it means thinking positively about ourselves.
I think it goes deeper.
Self-love is also the relationship we maintain with ourselves when nobody is applauding.
It is how we speak to ourselves after making a mistake.
It is whether we abandon ourselves when someone else withdraws.
It is whether our worth rises and falls according to somebody else’s attention.
It is whether we can remain present with our own feelings instead of immediately demanding that another person change them for us.
And perhaps, over time, it is creating enough inner safety that love no longer has to constantly prove its existence.
Then something interesting happens.
We stop asking other people to continuously fill a space that only we can truly inhabit.
This Doesn't Mean We Stop Needing People
I don’t believe the lesson is that we should become so self-sufficient that we no longer need affection, companionship, intimacy, reassurance, or belonging.
We are relational beings.
A warm embrace matters.
A loving word matters.
Someone showing up when we need them matters.
Being seen matters.
Relationships matter.
But there is an enormous difference between receiving love from another person and making another person responsible for our entire experience of being loved.
One is connection.
The other can quietly become dependence.
Maybe Love Was Never Missing
This is the paradox I keep returning to.
We spend enormous amounts of energy learning how to become more lovable.
More attractive.
More agreeable.
More successful.
More impressive.
More indispensable.
We learn techniques for getting people to choose us, admire us, desire us, follow us, appreciate us.
Yet perhaps the most transformative question is much simpler:
Can I recognize love without demanding that it arrive in one particular form?
Can I notice it in a friend’s concern?
In a parent’s imperfect attempt to care?
In a child’s trust?
In someone’s quiet presence?
In my own ability to care for myself?
In the simple experience of being alive and connected to another human being?
Perhaps love has always been less about acquisition and more about awareness.
Less about demanding and more about receiving.
Less about controlling another person’s response and more about becoming capable of feeling what is already here.
In a world where almost everything can be summoned on demand, perhaps love remains one of life’s beautiful exceptions.
Because love cannot truly be demanded.
It can be expressed.
It can be offered.
It can be nurtured.
It can be reciprocated.
But ultimately, it has to be seen and felt within.
A Reflection from Relationships Matter
Many of these questions are at the heart of my book, Relationships Matter, where I explore how our thoughts, feelings, expectations, and inner patterns shape the relationships we experience.
Since writing the book, my own exploration has continued—particularly into the relationship between emotions, the body, and the nervous system. If anything, that journey has strengthened one of the ideas I keep returning to:
The quality of our relationships with others is deeply connected to the relationship we have with ourselves.
If this reflection resonates with you, I invite you to explore Relationships Matter.