What is Love?
The need for connection is embedded in human nature.
In this age, it is difficult to form genuine bonds based on love without first being attracted to a person’s appearance. For a demisexual, it is often much more frustrating to do so, much less explain to others why I won’t date. It is not pride.
It’s a perception thing: I literally do not see a “potential partner” until friendship has developed and I can exist with a separate identity as well as that of being in a relationship. No, it’s not me wanting to prove I’m strong or independent. Although I don’t mind that.
The reason is that when I finally decided to give my all to someone, he used it for his convenience, even though he was unaware of it. Like countless girls before me, I promised myself I would never let cheating happen. Except… it did. No matter what I did. And the worst part was that he blamed me for it.
In the moment, it made sense that there was something fundamentally wrong with me to deserve that sort of treatment. To believe that it didn’t matter how much I gave because it wasn’t worth anything anyways. But after a few months I began to see things differently.
I was so ashamed and humiliated and broken, that for the longest time I didn’t tell anyone what he said or did. That he had lied when he said he loved me. That his overcompensation was because he’d been with another girl the entire time. That he cut me off in the end because “no guy should ever have to deal with you” and “I don’t know what love is.” His words still echo all the time.
Although I pretended to be happy and accepting of the fact that I didn’t deserve to be loved, I realized that the reality is that sometimes you must save yourself from yourself. Suppressing the pain had a serious negative impact because I became numb and withdrawn from everything in the months after.
But I learned an important lesson: love means learning to be with someone while they grow. It doesn’t mean to endure whatever hardships and to sacrifice everything just to stay together, because that’s what gets you ultimately taken advantage of (complacency). It means cultivating a life full of actively choosing to learn and improve, not just because you want benefits of the other person, but because you know it is the right thing to do.
I’m not a major anime fan, but this one, Violet Evergarden, struck me to the core:
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