Real Love Liberates

We enter relationships hoping to stake some claim on love, on another person, on a kind of safety. We call it “commitment,” “forever,” “my partner,” as if the words themselves can cast a spell, make things sure.

But beneath these assurances, there’s a hum of something truer: we control nothing. We can get better, for a time, at holding our breath, keeping still, willing things to stay in place. We may carry on like prizefighters in the ring, clinging to each other in willed exhaustion, determined to keep love on our terms.

Or, if we’re lucky, the force of love itself breaks through, scattering the house of cards we built, reminding us that it never belonged to us to begin with.

Real love liberates.