Stop asking people to love you the way you love them.

Not everyone carries your depth, your warmth, or that quiet instinct to give without being asked. Sometimes the ache comes from placing your heart in hands that never knew how to hold it.

You love with intention. You show up even when you’re tired, breaking, or unsure. You feel deeply in a world that often loves in passing. But you can’t expect your level of love from people who were never taught how to care for a heart like yours, it will only bruise you, make you believe you’re too much, when really, you’ve just been pouring the right love into the wrong places.

Love shouldn’t feel like pleading or proving your worth.
And one day, someone will meet you with the same gentleness, and effort you’ve been offering so freely.

Until then, don’t shrink yourself.
Just stop giving your heart to hands that can’t hold it.

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SnickersDOM · M

This is entirely sensible and thankfully something one is able to do. The only thing you can't fully guard against is someone coming along who does initially act like they love you back with that same, equal depth, reciprocating every nuance naturally, but then later suddenly pulls the rug out from under you and takes all that mutuality and perfection away, regardless of what the excuse they give is for the sudden 180 degree pivot. Those people make everything a minefield, and have the capacity to take you to the highest highs and then drop you to the lowest lows. That fickle capacity is exacerbated when online and you may be in a situation where you cannot ever fully know how much of any of it was ever true to begin with. That just makes you want to build walls up to the stratosphere.

mindstruggle

@SnickersDOM
That’s the part that breaks people the most, the ones who mirror your depth at first and then vanish emotionally. It teaches you caution you never asked for.