Some of us will require the better part of a lifetime to learn a very simple-sounding lesson that should have struck us as obvious and urgent from the start, that the only love worthy of the name, the only love we should ever be interested in, is reciprocal love.
In other words, a love where another person is entirely as convinced of us as we are of them, where another person is every bit as present in the relationship as we are.
A love where we never need to persuade or beg.
A love where we aren't left anxious and agitated by evasions and ambiguities.
A love where we don't have to wonder where they are and when they'll get back to us, where we aren't repeatedly up in the early hours writing them messages, explaining what we hope for from them, where they never cease to be entirely there for us as we are there for them, and they are profoundly grateful that we are in their lives as we are grateful that they are in ours.
This isn't arrogance or entitlement.
This isn't too much.
This isn't neediness.
It's a basic law of emotional reciprocity that will strike us as peculiar or off-putting for only one reason: because we haven't yet learned what we're owed, because we've come from a very deprived place, because we were, somewhere early on, trained to despise ourselves.
What nonsense we may sometimes accept in lieu of this essential and rightful fare.
