My Understanding of Love: An Essay on Love and Relationships

By Haven Duddy

This essay explores love and relationships through the lens of meaning, empathy, responsibility, and the emotional space between two people. It's a map of how love moves - and how understanding shapes connection.

Love, as I understand it now, is always two.

Even the simplest love — a sunset on the beach, or a mug of hot chocolate handed to you at exactly the right moment — is a kind of relationship. A moment where the outer world aligns with your inner world in a way that feels effortless and whole.

That is the easy love.

The love that asks nothing of you.

But the moment another human being enters the picture, love changes shape.

It becomes layered.

It becomes relational.

It becomes a living space between two worlds — two meanings, two histories, two interpretations trying, in whatever way they can, to meet.

And this is where love becomes complicated.

Because nothing matters the same way to everyone.

Not ever.

Every person carries a private universe — a constellation formed from their experiences, fears, values, memories, hopes, and blind spots.

What feels enormous to one person may feel tiny to another.

What leaves one person in tears might barely register for someone else.

The mistake we make — the one that quietly unravels relationships — is assuming our meaning is the default meaning.

And nothing shows this more clearly than something as ordinary and absurd as car line at my daughter’s school.

To me, car line was just logistics.

A morning loop.

A small system you follow more or less depending on the day.

Sometimes I pulled all the way forward; sometimes, if the lane was empty, I stopped right at the building and let my daughter hop out.

It felt harmless. Efficient. Practical.

Then one morning she said:

“Mommy, you’re supposed to pull all the way up.

I’m on the committee at school for improving car line.”

And in an instant — without thinking — everything shifted.

Not because I suddenly cared about car line.

But because she did.

Because she was involved.

Because she felt responsible.

Because it meant something to her.

And the moment I understood that, it meant something to me.

That is the heart of love:

When something matters to someone you love,

it becomes your responsibility to care —

not because the thing matters to you,

but because they do.

This is where love begins to ask something of us.

Because in the context of a real relationship —

one you truly care about —

there is a difference between saying:

“This doesn’t matter to me,

but you matter to me,

so I’m willing to understand why it matters to you.”

and saying:

“This doesn’t matter,

so it shouldn’t matter to you either.”

The second one sounds rational,

but the emotional message underneath it is this:

“You don’t matter enough for me to understand your meaning.”

And that — not the situation, not the disagreement, not the issue itself —

is what creates the deepest wound.

Because when someone dismisses the meaning something holds for you,

they are not simply disagreeing.

They are saying:

“Your inner world is invisible to me.”

“Your feelings aren’t real.”

“You don’t matter.”

And that is the opposite of love.

The deeper the bond,

the deeper the responsibility to understand how someone else experiences the world.

But here’s the thing most people forget:

You don’t have to experience love at every level.

No one is asking you to be endlessly open or endlessly self-aware.

Not everyone wants deep love.

Not everyone can hold it.

Your experience of love stays shallow or becomes deep depending entirely on your willingness to understand — yourself and others.

Understanding is love.

Understanding is acceptance.

Understanding is the thing that makes two worlds finally meet.

You do not have to agree with anyone.

Agreement is not the point.

Your relationship with love — the degree to which you get to feel it, build it, and live it —

will be determined by how deeply you’re willing to be honest about:

• what things mean to you,

• what things mean to someone else,

• and whether you’re willing to make choices that align your outer world with your inner truth.

Which leads to the hardest part of all:

The moment you tell the truth to yourself.

Because eventually, you begin to see the places where:

• your meaning and someone else’s meaning do not align,

• your worlds do not meet,

• your values do not match,

• your needs cannot be met,

• your truths keep bouncing off walls you didn’t build.

And when you finally see it, you face a choice:

Accept reality and move within it

or

Deny it and try to make someone into someone they cannot be.

Most people choose the second one.

Not because they’re unkind,

but because they’re afraid.

Afraid to lose the relationship.

Afraid to be alone.

Afraid to start over.

Afraid to disappoint someone.

Afraid to say out loud, “This doesn’t fit.”

But here is what I know now:

You cannot change another person.

You cannot love someone into becoming your match.

You cannot reshape their inner world in the name of devotion.

You cannot hold on when holding on requires you to let go of yourself.

That is not love.

That is fear wearing love’s clothing.

Real love — the grown kind — says:

“I see what’s real.

I honor what’s real.

And if this connection cannot become what I need,

I give myself permission to move toward the life that can.”

There is another game you can play.

A better one.

Go build the life you want

with the people who want to love you

in the way you are meant to be loved.

Not the people who minimize your meaning.

Not the ones who cannot meet you.

Not the ones who make you shrink.

But the ones whose inner world recognizes yours

and treats it with care.

Because the final — and hardest — understanding of love is this:

The deepest love you will ever know

is the love you learn to give yourself.

Not the surface version.

Not the polished version.

Not the one that looks good from the outside.

Real self-love is:

• seeing your truth clearly,

• understanding your own meaning,

• recognizing your patterns,

• holding yourself accountable,

• refusing to abandon yourself,

• choosing alignment over attachment,

• and building a life that matches who you really are.

Self-love is not the beginning of love.

It is the final form.

And it takes courage — real courage — to reach it.

Love begins as beauty.

It becomes complicated in the space between two people.

And it becomes transcendent when it turns inward.

And that is my understanding of love:

Two worlds.

Two meanings.

Two responsibilities.

And one self —

finally understanding what it means to be loved.