The Art of Healthy Relationships: Loving Without Losing Yourself

Some people spend their whole lives searching for love, unaware that what they are actually searching for is the feeling of being enough. I know because I was one of them. Maybe you were too.

I’ve known what it’s like to look for love in all the wrong places, not because I didn’t deserve it, but because I wasn’t sure how to recognize it. I could tell you what I liked and didn’t like, but when it came to defining what I truly wanted—what a healthy, loving relationship felt like—I struggled. My past experiences with love had been chaotic, inconsistent. Love, in my childhood, meant either being smothered or being neglected, with few stops in between. I carried that confusion into adulthood, unable to trust the very thing I longed for most.

The truth is, you can do all the healing in the world, and you will still experience heartbreak. You will still feel rejection, disappointment, grief. That is the price of being human. But what healing does give you is the ability to hold those emotions without collapsing into them. It allows you to stop defining your worth by how others treat you. It shifts the focus from Do they love me? to Do I love myself in this relationship?

For a long time, I closed myself off to avoid pain. I convinced myself that being unseen was safer than being rejected. I walked through life with the belief that joy was temporary, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And because that was my mindset, it followed me everywhere. The stories I told myself about relationships weren’t kind, and they weren’t on my side. They convinced me that I was too much or not enough—and this was where I tried to source love.

No wonder it never felt like enough.

Redefining Love from the Inside Out

Healing meant learning to see myself outside of how others perceived me. I had to stop proving my worth—to myself, to others. I had to give myself space to heal, to enjoy the simple pleasure of getting to know myself without judgment or performance. And only when I did that could I ask the most important question:

What does a healthy relationship feel like to me?

Not what it looks like to others. Not what it’s supposed to be. Not what society, family, or past versions of me dictated.

And that was hard. Because for much of my life, I had been misunderstood. I had learned that to be seen, I had to prove myself. I had to be useful, accommodating, agreeable. And in doing so, I was always looking outward, trying to anticipate what others needed—never once asking what I needed.

Sound familiar?

When we’ve spent our lives proving ourselves, we don’t know how to be loved just as we are. And when we finally start shifting, when we set boundaries, when we take up space, when we stop living for others, some people will not like it. Some will be confused. Some will call us selfish. And that’s where we must hold firm.

Because love built on self-abandonment is not love—it’s survival.

The Difference Between Seeking Love and Receiving It

I once knew someone who was desperate to find “the one.” She had a vision—a partner who fit a very specific list of traits. She did everything “right.” She went to church functions, built a thriving career, and traveled the world. She was charismatic and bright, but love never came. She was repeatedly friend-zoned, and it crushed her.

When I gently asked her why she was drawn to a certain type of man, she was offended. That was never my intent. I simply wanted to know: Did she feel like she was enough, just as she was? Or did she believe her worth increased when a certain kind of man chose her?

She went quiet. She didn’t want to talk about it.

Months later, I heard from a mutual friend that this conversation had shaken her. For the first time, she considered that she was not just looking for love—she was looking for external validation. She wanted love to prove something to the world. And because of that, she had unknowingly sourced love from lack, from fear, from the belief that she needed to be “chosen” to be enough.

She’s still looking for love. But now, she’s looking differently. She’s allowing relationships to unfold naturally, without treating them like a chess game. She’s no longer performing. She’s no longer chasing. She’s learning that love is not something you win—it’s something you become open to receiving.

Attraction ≠ Compatibility

It always makes me sad when I see people treating love like a riddle that can be solved. Some turn to astrology or tarot—two practices I deeply respect but often see misused—to predict the future. But love is not a formula. You can’t blueprint your way into a perfect relationship.

You can be wildly attracted to someone and still be completely incompatible.

You can admire someone’s qualities and still not be the right fit.

You can think someone is “perfect” and still be deeply unhappy with them.

Because love is not about finding someone who meets a checklist. Love is about how you feel when you are with them. Do you feel safe? Seen? Valued? Or do you feel like you have to work for love? Like you have to convince them?

If you are doing mental gymnastics to rationalize someone’s behavior, that is not love. That is exhaustion.

And yet, we do this. Over and over. Because we are taught that love is something we earn. We are taught that grand gestures and intensity equal devotion. We mistake magnetism for compatibility. And when it all falls apart, we feel devastated, convinced we will never love again.

That is the lie fear tells us.

Love Does Not Require You to Abandon Yourself

When people show you who they are—believe them.

When you feel drained by a relationship—pay attention.

When someone’s love feels like a test you keep failing—walk away.

A healthy, loving relationship is not one that completes you. It is one that expands you. One that allows you to be fully present without performing, without proving, without twisting yourself into something small just to be chosen.

And that begins with choosing yourself first.

Because when you trust yourself, when you build your worth from the inside out, you don’t have to chase love.

Love recognizes you. Love finds you. Love is something you become.