I Finally Learned What Being in Love Felt Like

I have been in three relationships.

And if you asked me whether I loved all three people, I would probably disappoint you with my answer.

No.

I was attached. I was attracted. I was afraid. I was confused. I tried to make things work. I stayed when I should have left. I said yes when a part of me was already saying no.

But love?

I think I have been in love only once.

And strangely, I didn't recognize it immediately.

I recognized it in the little things—the comfort, the safety, the laughter, the hours of conversation, the feeling that I didn't have to become someone else to be wanted.

Before that, I thought being in a relationship and being in love were the same thing.

They aren't.

The first time I said yes

My first relationship happened when I was still in school.

It began quite ordinarily. We started talking. He approached me, and I said no.

But he kept trying.

For months, we spoke almost every day. Eventually, his presence became familiar. Talking to him became part of my routine, and somewhere along the way, I said yes.

Looking back now, I think I confused familiarity with love.

I was young. I didn't really know what a healthy relationship was supposed to feel like.

Slowly, there were rules.

• What I wore.
• How I wore my hair.
• What kind of bags I carried.
• Whether I wore rings or certain hairstyles.
• Who I could talk to.
• Whether I could go out.
• Even some of my male cousins became a problem.

At first, I tried to adjust.

I cried. I explained. I tried to make things work. I convinced myself that perhaps this was what relationships required—that loving someone meant making compromises, even when those compromises slowly made me uncomfortable in my own life.

But there comes a point when adjusting stops being love and starts becoming losing yourself.

Eventually, I couldn't do it anymore.

I ended the relationship.

The ending itself became frightening and messy. It taught me another lesson I didn't understand at the time:

Leaving someone does not make you cruel.
Sometimes, leaving is the first time you choose yourself.

I was young, but that relationship left something behind—a fear of what might happen if I ever tried to leave someone again.

And that fear followed me.

The second time I said yes

For a few years, I stayed away from relationships.

Then someone I had once had a crush on came back into my life.

I had liked him before—not because I knew him deeply, but because I was attracted to him.

When he asked for my number and asked if I was in a relationship, I said I was single.

We started talking.

He approached me.

And once again, I said no.

But this time, I already knew something important: my parents probably wouldn't accept the relationship.

I knew where things could eventually lead.

Still, I was afraid of losing the person.

So I said yes.

And that is something I understand much better now.

Sometimes we don't enter relationships because our hearts are saying,

“I want this.”

Sometimes we enter them because another part of us is whispering,

“What if I lose this person?”

There is a difference.

The relationship itself became complicated.

There was insecurity. There were arguments. There were differences in responsibility and lifestyle. There were things I wasn't comfortable with and things I couldn't imagine fitting into my future.

There was also pressure around physical intimacy.

I had my own boundaries and fears. I knew that relationships can end, even when you don't want them to. I knew that someday I might marry someone else. And that thought made intimacy complicated for me.

Even when I was emotionally involved, a part of me was still looking toward the future and wondering,

“Is this really the person I am going to build my life with?”

That question should have told me something.

I was trying to hold on to a relationship that, deep down, I already knew wasn't where I wanted my life to go.

But leaving was difficult.

Not because I was deeply in love.

Because I was afraid.

• Afraid of hurting him.
• Afraid of what would happen after the breakup.
• Afraid of repeating what had happened the first time.
• Afraid of losing another person.

So I stayed longer than I should have.

And eventually, I left.

It took me a long time to understand that fear of losing someone is not the same thing as love for someone.

Then someone unexpected came along

And then there was him.

• Not someone I had planned to meet.
• Not someone I was searching for.
• Just a random message on Instagram.

We started talking.

And something felt different.

I had been approached by people before. I had turned people down before. I had been scared before.

But this time, I didn't feel like I had to protect myself from the person standing in front of me.

We met briefly in person.

Then we met again at a café.

And I still remember how strange that felt to me because I had never done something like that before—meeting someone I had only known through Instagram.

But I wasn't terrified.

I was comfortable.

That mattered.

• I noticed his touch didn't make me uncomfortable.
• I noticed how easily we laughed.
• I noticed the attention.
• The care.
• The hours of talking.
• The constant little updates about his day.

And somewhere in all of that, something inside me changed.

For the first time, I thought:

“Maybe I actually want someone.”

That realization scared me more than I expected.

Because I knew what could happen next.

• I could get attached.
• I could fall in love.
• I could lose the friendship.

So I actually told him that I didn't need so much attention and care because I was scared.

• Scared that I would start liking him.
• Scared that I would lose the friendship.
• Scared of what would happen if I allowed myself to want him.

But sometimes, the heart understands something before the mind is ready to admit it.

I was already falling.

This time, I didn't have to convince myself

That was the biggest difference.

With the first relationship, I became attached because someone was there every day.

With the second, I said yes partly because I was afraid of losing the person.

But this time?

Nobody had to convince me.

I wasn't trying to make myself love him.

I wasn't trying to hold on because I was afraid of being alone.

I simply began to enjoy having him in my life.

• I wanted to hear about his day.
• I wanted to tell him about mine.
• I wanted to see him.
• I wanted his presence.

And more importantly, I felt like myself around him.

There was no version of me I had to perform to keep him interested.

• I didn't have to become smaller.
• I didn't have to constantly prove that I wouldn't leave.
• I didn't have to convince myself that discomfort was normal.

There was simply this feeling of,

“I like being here.”

And maybe that's what love felt like for me.

• Not chaos.
• Not fear.
• Not constantly wondering whether I was enough.

Just comfort.

The first “I love you”

He said it first.

I didn't immediately say it back.

I needed time.

Maybe because the words meant something to me now.

Eventually, I said it too.

And even now, I still remember that feeling.

• The butterflies.
• The excitement.
• The strange happiness of realizing that this time, I wasn't saying those words because I was supposed to.

I was saying them because I meant them.

And that changed the meaning of everything that had come before.

I started understanding that I had been using the word love for different experiences.

• Attachment.
• Attraction.
• Familiarity.
• Fear.
• Dependency.
• Loneliness.
• Hope.

They can all feel incredibly intense.

And intensity can easily be mistaken for love.

But love doesn't always feel intense.

Sometimes it feels safe.

Sometimes it feels boring in the best possible way.

Sometimes it looks like laughing about something completely stupid for an hour.

Sometimes it is simply knowing that you can be yourself around someone.

So, was I wrong about my first two relationships?

I don't think so.

I think I was young.

I was learning.

I made choices with the understanding I had at that time.

• I confused attachment with love.
• I confused fear of losing someone with wanting to be with them.
• I stayed because leaving felt frightening.

And I learned from each experience.

• My first relationship taught me that love should never require me to disappear.
• My second taught me that fear of losing someone isn't a good enough reason to stay.
• And my third taught me something completely different:

Love can feel like choosing someone freely.

Not because I have to.

Not because I'm afraid.

Not because I have become used to them.

But because, after knowing what I don't want, I finally recognized something I genuinely did.

Maybe that's what love is

I don't know if I have the perfect definition of love.

I'm still learning.

But I know what it no longer means to me.

• Love isn't control.
• Love isn't constantly proving your loyalty.
• Love isn't giving up every part of yourself.
• Love isn't saying yes because you're afraid someone will leave.
• Love isn't ignoring discomfort because you're scared of being alone.
• And love isn't necessarily the relationship with the most arguments, the strongest jealousy, or the biggest emotional highs.

Sometimes love is much quieter.

• It is safety.
• It is choice.
• It is comfort.

It is being able to say, “I want you in my life,” without feeling like your entire life has to become that person.

I have been in three relationships.

But I have only been in love once.

And maybe the most beautiful part isn't that I finally found someone I love.

Maybe it's that, through all the relationships before him, I finally learned the difference between being afraid to lose someone and genuinely wanting someone to stay.

That difference changed everything.

And for the first time, I understood what being in love felt like.