what it took to convince me that love really is a choice
love isn't just about finding the right person. it's about being the right person, too.
People always say love is a choice. For most of my dating life, that was a sentiment I just couldn’t grasp.
Often, it was something I scoffed at internally: If loving this person is so hard that it has to be a choice, then maybe you’re forcing it to work with the wrong person.
And I do still think that’s true in many cases. Like, I couldn’t bring myself to choose love when it faded from my past relationships because, despite the haze of attachment trying to convince me otherwise, I knew these people were ultimately wrong for me.
I remember trying to break it off with an ex for maybe the third or fourth time, and he argued something about how love is supposed to take effort. Except, I could never muster the willingness to put in that effort. I just wanted out. Why should I try to make it work with someone I’m clearly incompatible with? What a waste of both our time.
By that point in my young adulthood, I wondered why anyone wanted to be with me at all. I’m a selfish partner, I thought. (And it was true.) I wasn’t motivated to try very hard — I knew I was a terrible communicator yet never bothered to change, and I was often more spiteful than I was loving.
To me, having to choose to love your partner was the equivalent of settling. Somehow, I understood why friendships take effort to cultivate, but I couldn’t make sense of putting work into romantic love. When you meet someone who’s truly right for you, shouldn’t everything just… fall into place?
But then I met Kyle. The sweet, gentle soul whose smile lights up a room. His affectionate gaze still makes me blush, and we guffaw so hard together that we discovered I can snort. It’s not just the intensity of our adoration for each other that changed my perspective, though. It was witnessing his never-wavering patience and empathy as I unpacked the messiest corners of my mind, until I was left with no doubt that he sees and cherishes me for all I am.
The more I got to know him, the more I realized I was not willing to fuck things up with this one. (If it didn’t work out between us, that would be alright — but I could never forgive myself if I was the one who sabotaged something so beautiful and rare.)
That’s when the hackneyed phrase, “If they wanted to, they would,” took on a whole new meaning. Because all of a sudden, I wanted to be the kind of partner he deserves, and I worked to make it happen. It gave me the clarity to realize that love is a choice not because you have to force yourself to love them, but because real love takes conscious action.
I had always perceived love only as a feeling, or even a state of being, but never as action. bell hooks’ “all about love” helped me conceptualize it: Love isn’t just a passive noun. It’s a verb.
Of course, that means actively prioritizing their needs, showing affection and appreciation, supporting them through life’s vicissitudes… you know, all the typical markers of commitment. But what’s so hard about genuine, healthy love isn’t just repeatedly choosing that person (that should be the easy part). Instead, it’s choosing to be continually vulnerable in defiance of your fiercest instincts.
Maybe it’s the childhood attachment issues we all have, or some sort of defense mechanism absorbed through popular dating culture, but many of us are wired to preemptively protect ourselves at the expense of our own desires. We feign nonchalance out of fear that having emotional needs will turn somebody off or, worse, give them ammunition against us.
To be truly known, for all of our quirks and beliefs and flaws, is to risk finding out that we are not wanted for who we are.
And rather than confront the possibility of rejection, we suppress our feelings to minimize the risk of getting our ego bruised. For me, that looked like turning a blind eye to a past partner’s disrespect because I couldn’t tell him how much his words and actions hurt me. The thought of exposing my emotions to his scrutiny was simply unbearable.
It felt much less painful, much less humiliating, for me to seethe in private or stonewall him in hopes he would intuitively understand my suffering in a way that would motivate him to change his behaviors. (It totally sounds even more delusional typed out like that.) In the end, detaching was easier than choosing vulnerability because it gave me the illusion of control.
But you’re never really in control. Real love necessitates the kind of sincerity that can only be cultivated when you’re fully honest about who you are and what you need, despite knowing there are no guarantees. So sometimes, your vulnerability will drive a potential partner away. In these cases, the vulnerability was never the issue; it merely put your compatibility to the test. The kind of person you want to be with should greet your innermost thoughts, needs and desires with genuine care and appreciation.
It’s the old maxim: You can’t say the wrong thing to the right person. (Of course, that comes with its own caveats. It’s not an excuse to bully or abuse or otherwise take advantage of somebody who loves you, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother to work on your own authentic self-growth.)
Once I fell for Kyle — someone who made me feel safe expressing all my needs and boundaries, who wasn’t scared off by my anxieties or blunders — that’s when I realized just how difficult it is to unlearn all of those unhealthy habits I’d internalized for so long.
The more I grew to love him, the more I wanted to run: What if it’s too good to be true? I’ll be shattered if this ends.
But the consistency of his character finally convinced me to trust him with the power I was so afraid to relinquish. I placed my heart into his hands and learned that instead of crushing it, all he ever wanted to do was nourish it.
Kyle was never big on digital communication before he met me. But in a long-distance relationship, phone calls and texts (and, sometimes, hand-written letters) are all you have. So although he would often send me “thinking of you” texts before bed, I still wanted the security of a daily goodnight text, just so I could rest assured each night that he didn’t die in a car accident or something without my knowledge.
Like many of my little asks, I wondered if it was irrational. I worried if it would become a burden, or if he would think I was insecure. But as soon as I brought it up, he was enthusiastic and reassuring all at once.
“Are you saying you want goodnight texts every night? … Okay! I can do that!” he said, his voice taking on the tone of delight it always does when he figures something out about me. Ever since that 20-second exchange early on in our relationship, he’s turned what I feared would be an obligation into a nightly opportunity to send me sweet nothings and thoughtful words of reassurance.
That dynamic translated to everything else we learned to share with each other. We’ve both expressed needs we were anxious to voice, but each time, we’ve only proven our eagerness to keep loving each other better.
There’s something of a paradox in choosing vulnerability: The most unshakeable sense of safety actually comes from giving someone the ability to hurt you.
There is no need for power play in a truly loving partnership, because you only win or lose together. Kyle’s joy is my joy, and his pain is my pain. I couldn’t fathom ever choosing to hurt him. Whereas a past version of me would make careless retorts or distance myself without explanation, the healed version of me chooses to listen with patience, communicate with intention and apologize with sincerity.
Of course, change takes time, so I do still flounder. But I can feel myself growing into the kind of partner Kyle deserves. It helps that he continues to inspire me through example — like how he validates my feelings without ever dismissing them, or how he earnestly learns from my perspectives whenever we conflict.
After one disagreement we had (about what, I have no idea), he ended the conversation by asking what he could “do better” during arguments. It was a question that flabbergasted me — no one I knew had ever asked such a thing before. I thought about how he was already so gentle and willing to take accountability even when we argued; what more could I ask of him? But I came up with a few suggestions, and not only was he receptive, but he synthesized my answers into actionable bullet points for him to work on.
It was yet another moment that motivated me to step it up. The love he showed me was so transformative, I wanted nothing more than to give him the world in return. Because although he can love me at my worst, why would I ever subject him to that if I can help it?
So when I say now that love is a choice, it means I choose to hold myself to a standard of healthy emotional regulation and secure attachment that does take conscious effort to cultivate. To choose love is to choose self-confrontation — to unpack your own traumas, toxic patterns and learned behaviors so that you’re capable of loving well.