Stop Expecting Love to Save You.

We’re raised on a very strange idea about romantic love. From the time we’re young, we’re soaked in the message that love is supposed to transform us — that it’s some kind of emotional miracle that will sweep in, tidy up the mess inside us, and make life finally make sense.

It sounds lovely. It’s also completely unrealistic.

Most of what we’re taught about love is marketing: Hollywood scripts, song lyrics designed to sell albums, and idealised couples posed on social media. The story is always the same — love arrives, everything shifts, and suddenly the emotional problems you’ve been carrying for decades vanish because someone “sees you.”

If only it worked like that.

The truth is far less romantic. No partner can fix your past, no relationship can heal years of insecurity, and no amount of affection can permanently silence the voice inside you that says you’re not good enough. We put an impossible amount of pressure on partners when we secretly expect them to do the emotional labour we’ve avoided doing ourselves, and then we feel disappointed when they fail at a job they never applied for.

Early attraction creates another problem. The initial rush of chemistry can feel intoxicating, and because it feels intense, people convince themselves it must be meaningful. But intensity isn’t love; it’s biology — dopamine, novelty, projection, and, quite often, need. When that high inevitably fades, as it always does, people imagine something has gone wrong. They panic. They think the relationship isn’t “real love” anymore. In truth, what’s faded isn’t love — it’s the fantasy. And many people would rather chase the fantasy again than face the ordinary, sometimes uncomfortable work of building something real.

One of the more awkward truths about early romantic love is that it’s incredibly self-referential. When we say “I love you,” what we often mean is “I love how I feel when you’re around.” That’s not malicious; it’s simply human. But it’s naïve to call it love when what we’re actually responding to is the version of ourselves the other person temporarily evokes. If we’re honest, many early declarations of love are closer to saying that the other person distracts us from ourselves, makes us feel desirable, gives us a sense of purpose, and fits the image we had in our heads. None of that is love. It’s emotional convenience dressed up as destiny.

Naturally, when the other person stops functioning as an emotional soothing device — when they’re tired, stressed, annoyed, or simply being human — we interpret it as a failure of the relationship rather than a collapse of our own projection. The fantasy breaks, and we mistake that for the relationship breaking.

Genuine intimacy is far less glamorous. It requires patience and effort. It means seeing the other person clearly and allowing yourself to be seen just as clearly in return. It involves tolerating difference rather than shaping someone into a version that suits you. It’s slow, steady, sometimes awkward work — nothing like the dramatic narratives we’ve been sold.

Mature love has very little to do with fireworks or soulmates. It’s steadier, less dramatic and far more honest. It accepts that the other person is not there to complete you, rescue you, or heal you, and that you remain responsible for your own internal world.

And maybe that truth is the hardest for us to accept: real love isn’t transformative in the magical sense. It doesn’t solve you or rescue you. It simply invites you to grow — if you’re willing. It begins the moment we stop asking, “Who will save me?” and start asking, “Who are you really, and can I meet you without expecting you to repair what was never your job to repair?”