What Is Love? (Really)

Chemistry, calm, and why I had it backwards for much of my life

March 30, 2026

I was adopted.

I was separated from my birth mother at birth, and then from a foster mother at about five months when I was adopted by my mom and dad. I don’t have conscious memories of either transition — but my nervous system does.

What some call the “primal wound” left me with a fear of abandonment that quietly shaped how I understood love for much of my life. What it reinforced — and our culture teaches this too — is that love is a transaction. We love people, and they love us back, as long as the cost-benefit analysis holds. If it swings the wrong way, we can be “abandoned.”

So, unconsciously, I spent years trying to make sure that didn’t happen. I craved affirmation early in relationships. I was drawn to people who were certain I was “the one,” because that felt like security. 

Two marriages. Two divorces. A lot of therapy — including EMDR, which genuinely changed things for me. EMDR, in particular, felt like someone turned the lights on for the first time. I had clarity about myself, my choices, and how to move forward. The “primal wound” had been healed enough that it no longer ran the show.

And, eventually, on the other side of all of it: the understanding that love is not a transaction. It’s an energy, a mindset, and a practice. And it starts — almost entirely — with you.

Let me start with what love isn’t. Because a lot of what we call love is actually something else wearing love’s clothing.

We use the word constantly — and we use it to mean almost everything. We say we love our partners, our kids, our best friends. But we also say it about pizza and parking spaces and that one coworker who always laughs at our jokes. We talk about falling in love like it's something that happens to us, something we stumble into and out of, like a pothole. We use the intensity of an emotion — the butterflies, the obsession, the adrenaline — and we call it love.

I once had someone try to convince me that I loved her because I was caring, considerate, thoughtful, empathetic, compassionate. I told her I was a “loving” person but that I was not “in love” with her, at least not yet.

These are all real experiences. But they’re not all love. And when we can’t tell the difference, we make choices that cost us.

Attachment isn’t love. The desperate need to know the other person likes you back, the constant seeking of reassurance — that’s anxiety, not love. It’s real and it’s intense.

But intensity is not the same thing as love.

Fixing people isn’t love. If you’re drawn to someone because they need rescuing, that’s about your own need to feel worthy and needed. It has almost nothing to do with them.

Obligation isn’t love. My mother believed that love and loyalty were basically synonymous — that if you loved someone, you supported them unconditionally, no matter what. Every time I pushed back or disagreed, my love was called into question.

That’s not love. That’s a contract.

The common thread through all of it: fear. Fear wearing love’s face.

And this one trips people up the most: a disrupted nervous system is not a green flag.

We’ve been taught — by TV shows, music, rom-coms, basically the entire entertainment industry — to look for fireworks. The racing heart, the can’t-stop-thinking-about-them obsession. We think that’s love. A lot of the time, it’s your nervous system in fight-or-flight around someone who feels familiar but isn’t necessarily good for you. A genuinely loving connection — romantic, friendship, family — should make your nervous system feel calm. Safe. Settled.

That’s the green flag. Almost nobody tells you that.

Here’s what I had to learn the hard way: strong chemistry and a calm nervous system are not mutually exclusive. You can feel an intense, immediate connection with someone — the kind that feels like recognition, where the hours together fly by — and still feel settled in your body around them. Still feel curious rather than anxious. Still feel like yourself rather than like you’re auditioning. Feel the passion in a romantic connection but not constantly worrying if they like you, too. 

That combination? That’s not a red flag dressed up as a green one. That’s the real thing. What I was chasing before wasn’t connection — it was relief from fear. They can feel identical in the moment. They are completely different.

So what is love?

Years ago, I was working on my personal mission statement — something I did every year with my students — and I kept cutting it down. Every year, shorter. Until I got to one sentence. And then even that felt like too much. I kept landing on the same thing: all you need is love.

Which felt a little cheesy. And a bit off. Then, I read something by Ram Das that reframed the whole thing for me.

He said the point isn’t to love someone, or to be loved. The point is to be love. To be loving energy.

That landed somewhere in my chest and didn’t let go. Because if you’re being love — if you’re radiating that energy inward and outward, toward yourself and other people — you’re never at the mercy of whether someone gives it back. You’re not waiting to be completed. You’re not filling a void. The love is already there. It’s already in you.

And other people will be drawn to that loving energy.

In practice, it means leading with curiosity instead of judgment. Empathy instead of defensiveness. Treating conflict as a problem you solve together rather than a battle you need to win. Not making assumptions about people — trying to understand them instead. It took me a long time to live this more consistently. And I’m still a work in progress. But that’s what the practice looks like.

And the foundation underneath all of it is integrity.

Love, at its deepest level, is about alignment. It’s when who you are matches who you want to be and you show up authentically. When your values and your choices are actually in sync. When you stop performing a version of yourself for other people and start being real.

That alignment is what unlocks self-love. Not the spa day version — though a good spa day has its place. Real self-love is seeing yourself honestly, the strengths and the places where you need to grow, without collapsing into shame or guilt about either. bell hooks writes that love is a deep commitment to another person’s spiritual growth.

I’d say self-love is that same commitment turned inward. And it requires you to be honest about where you actually are.

If you can live with that kind of integrity, you will like and love the person you see in the mirror every night before bed. 

When you can do that for yourself, a new possibility opens up. Because when you meet someone and both of you are showing up authentically, radiating loving energy, not performing, not hiding — the connection is real. That’s what love actually feels like. Not the fireworks. The realness.

One last thing, because I think it matters as much as anything else I’ve said:

Love is a choice. It’s a practice.

The feelings will ebb and flow. That’s just being human. But loving someone — or loving yourself — means showing up even when the feeling isn’t at full intensity. It means having the hard conversation instead of avoiding it. Setting the boundary instead of letting resentment build. Being curious about why someone is struggling instead of judging them for it. Taking care of your sleep, your body, your energy — not because someone told you to, but because you’ve decided that you matter enough to treat yourself that way.

That’s what love looks like in the real world. Not the grand gesture. The daily choice to show up as your best, most honest and authentic self — for yourself first, and for the people you care about.

I spent a long time looking for love in the wrong places and in the wrong ways. What I know now is that I had it backwards. Love isn’t something you find. It’s something you become.