Why am I always the one left empty-handed by love?

You know, I thought I understood love.

Or at least something close to it.

For years, I believed all it took was to love deeply, love well, love truly. To love with your body, your soul, your mind. But today, I’m writing, to you, to me, to us, to the idea we have of love, because I’m not so sure anymore. This morning of June, 2025, I woke up with a big hole in my chest. An emptiness, a dull anxiety, a strange feeling that scared me for no clear reason.

I had a dream. A disturbing one. What I remember most is my mother’s hand pulling me out of it, as if she had saved me.

When I woke up, there was confusion… and then, that void. I tried to fall back asleep. Nothing.

So I wanted to call someone. The ones I used to call when I couldn’t sleep, when I needed someone.

But I couldn’t anymore. They weren’t there, or I assumed they wouldn’t be.

Call my friends? They work tomorrow. Maybe they’re already asleep in their partners’ arms.

And I don’t want to disturb them. Then I thought: maybe I could call my partner. Except… there is none.

Or at least, no love in my life.Not the kind I was hoping for. Not the kind I thought I understood.

The emptiness stayed with me all morning. I kept wondering: why does it hurt so much? Why today? (or what did i ate?) And I realized, simply, that I was alone.

It’s wild, you know. It only took one night, one dream, one empty morning, 25 years of life… to admit that maybe I’ve been completely wrong about love.

And clearly, my subconscious wanted me to know.

Still, I tried. To love wildly, to give myself completely. I was present, intense, committed. Sometimes even clinging to people who gave me nothing in return.

And I often asked myself, especially today: what am I doing wrong? Am I cold? Closed off? Unlovable? Do I deserve this?

They say we should ask ourselves what love is. But I’d be lying if I said I knew.

So what is love?

Attachment? The thrill? Security? Giving yourself until you disappear? Waiting for a prince? A promise? Or just a chain of unmet expectations?

Why am I always the one left with empty arms?

While rereading my psychology notes, I came across attachment styles.

After five years of study, it only took one sentence to recognize myself:

Ambivalent attachment, with disorganized traits (and a bit of secure, still under construction).

I crave connection, but I’ve learned to fear it.

I need to be chosen, seen, acknowledged even when I doubt, even when I run. I swing between holding on too tightly and leaving too quickly. Not out of whim out of survival. I leave before I can be left. I protect myself before I lose myself. I carry this toxic mix inside me: loving and fearing. Wanting and pushing away. Longing for fusion, then drowning in it.

I thought I knew what I wanted. I didn’t want a lukewarm love, halfway there. I wanted passion, letters, whispered voices in the dark. I wanted to be in his dreams, not just in his routines. I wanted him to think of me without reminders. To see me, read me, understand me without me having to justify myself.

I believed that if I loved deeply, the other would meet me there. So I gave everything. Without calculation. Without waiting for proof it was mutual.

I loved him before he chose me. I loved for two, sometimes. I carried silences, absences, like they were normal.

He — or they — were within me, etched into my gestures, my thoughts, my choices. But me? Maybe I was never truly within them.

Or not with the same intensity. Not without insisting. Not without reminding, asking, begging for a bit of care, a little something back.

And now, I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way. Maybe there are many of us who don’t know how to love, or what love really means. Maybe what we were sold was a lie. A fairytale.

Maybe love real love doesn’t save us. Doesn’t fill the void. Doesn’t erase anything.

I don’t know if I’m still waiting for someone. I’m not even sure what I’m waiting for anything.

But I know what I no longer want. I don’t want a love that makes me doubt myself.I don’t want to believe intensity is proof, that suffering means loving. I’ve given too much without return, waited too long to be seen the way I saw others.

I don’t want to earn love.I want a love that doesn’t break me. A love that doesn’t need me to disappear in order to exist. A love that sees me, even when I’m still trying to find myself.

But today, maybe I’m no longer looking for a miracle, or a fairytale.

See ya ;)