You Can Love Someone and Still Not Know How to Love Them
Because Love Is a Feeling. Loving Someone Is a Skill.
Brittany A. Moore
8/31/20265 min read
“But I know they love me.”
I’ve heard some version of this so many times. And usually, I believe them.
I think sometimes we assume that if a relationship is painful, dysfunctional, disconnected, or just not working, then somebody must not really love the other person.
But what if they do? What if two people can genuinely, deeply love each other… and still be really fucking bad at loving each other?
Because loving someone and knowing how to love someone are not the same thing. And I don’t think we talk about that enough.
We Give Love a Lot of Credit
We’ve been sold this idea that love is almost magical. Find the right person. Fall in love. Love each other enough. And somehow, the rest is supposed to work itself out.
If things get difficult, we start questioning the love. “If they loved me, they wouldn’t do that.” “If she really loved me, she’d understand.” “If he loved me enough, he’d change.” “If we really loved each other, this wouldn’t be so hard.”
But love doesn’t automatically teach you how to communicate. Love doesn’t teach you how to listen when you’re triggered. Love doesn’t teach you how to apologize without explaining away the thing you’re apologizing for. It doesn’t teach you how to ask for what you need. It doesn’t teach you how to hear “no.” It doesn’t teach you how to set a boundary. Or respect one you don’t like. It doesn’t teach you how to navigate jealousy, resentment, changing bodies, changing desires, money, family, sex, parenting, independence, or any of the other shit two human beings eventually have to figure out when they decide to share their lives with each other.
Those are skills. And nobody magically downloads them into your brain because you fell in love.
You Can Have Good Intentions and Still Cause Harm
This is one of the harder things to accept about relationships. We want our intentions to count for more than they sometimes do.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” “I was only trying to help.” “I did that because I care about you.” “That wasn’t my intention.”
And intention matters. Of course it does. But so does impact. You can love someone and dismiss their feelings. You can love someone and constantly become defensive when they tell you they’re hurt. You can love someone and try to control them because losing them scares the hell out of you. You can love someone and avoid every difficult conversation because conflict makes you uncomfortable. You can love someone and expect them to anticipate needs you’ve never actually communicated. You can love someone and repeatedly cross their boundaries. You can love someone and make them responsible for regulating your emotions. You can love someone and hurt them. Sometimes badly. That doesn’t automatically mean you’re abusive, toxic, narcissistic, or whatever other diagnosis the internet has decided to hand out this week.
Sometimes it means you’re a human being with some shit to learn. And sometimes the person who has some shit to learn is us.
It’s Easy to Read This and Think About Them
Oh, "EYE" know.
Because when we read relationship content, our minds have a funny way of immediately finding the person who needs to hear it.
“Oh, my ex needs this.” “I’m sending this to my husband.” “This is EXACTLY what I’ve been trying to tell her.”
Maybe. But stay with yourself for a minute. How do YOU love people? What happens when someone tells you that you’ve hurt them? Do you get curious? Or do you immediately start building your defense? When someone needs something you don’t understand, can you listen without deciding whether their need is reasonable first? Can somebody you love be disappointed in you without you making their disappointment about your worth? Can you hear “no” without punishing them for it? Can you communicate what you need before resentment starts doing the communicating for you? Can you repair? Can you apologize? Can you change your behavior? Can you allow someone to have an emotional experience that you don’t agree with? Can you love someone without requiring them to abandon themselves in order for you to feel secure?
Those questions are a little less fun. But they’re important. Because sometimes we are so focused on whether we’re being loved correctly that we never stop to ask: What does it feel like to be loved by me?
“But I Know They Love Me”
Let’s come back to that sentence. Because sometimes it’s true. They love you. Deeply. They aren’t pretending. And they still may not currently have the capacity, tools, self awareness or willingness to love you in a way that works for you. Both things can be true. And I think that’s especially important because so many people stay in painful situations trying to solve one question: “Do they love me?”
Maybe that’s not always the most useful question. Maybe they do. Maybe the better question is: Does the way this person currently knows how to love work for me?
Can I thrive here? Can I be myself here? Can my needs exist here? Can we repair when we hurt each other? Are we both willing to learn?
Because someone’s love for you doesn’t automatically obligate you to stay in a relationship that isn’t working for you. And your love for someone doesn’t automatically mean you’re capable of giving them the relationship they need either. That’s a painful reality. Sometimes love exists and compatibility doesn’t. Sometimes love exists and capacity doesn’t. Sometimes love exists and timing is terrible. Sometimes love exists and two people need very different things. Sometimes love exists and somebody simply isn’t willing to do the work required to build something healthier. Love can be real and still not be enough.
Loving Someone Is Something You Practice
This is the part I find hopeful.
If loving someone were something we either naturally knew how to do or didn’t, we’d be pretty screwed. But relational skills can be learned. We can learn to listen differently. We can learn to communicate more clearly. We can learn to recognize what happens in our bodies when we feel threatened, rejected, abandoned, criticized, or ashamed. We can learn to ask instead of assume. We can learn to sit with discomfort instead of immediately trying to make it disappear.
We can learn to repair. We can learn our partner. And we can learn ourselves. None of that requires perfection. I don’t think healthy relationships are relationships where nobody gets triggered, nobody says the wrong thing, nobody gets defensive, and nobody ever hurts anybody. Good luck with that. We’re human.
For me, the more interesting question is what happens AFTER. Can we come back? Can we get curious? Can we take responsibility? Can we say, “I love you and I can see that the way I handled that hurt you”? Can we stop using love as proof that our behavior should be acceptable and start allowing love to motivate us to become better at the behavior? There’s a difference.
Maybe Love Isn’t the Finish Line
Maybe love is where the work begins.
Because saying “I love you” tells me something important about how you feel. But how you listen to me, speak to me, repair with me, respect me, touch me, make room for me, communicate with me, and respond when my needs bump up against yours? That tells me something about how you love. And those aren’t always the same thing. So yes, ask yourself whether the people in your life love you. But every once in a while, ask yourself something else too: Does the way they know how to love work for me?
And then ask the question that’s probably harder: What does it feel like to be loved by me? You might really like the answer. You might realize there’s some shit you want to work on. Probably both. That’s okay. We’re learning. And maybe that’s part of what it means to unlearn love in the first place.
-Brittany A. Moore xoxo