Love is love… right? But love is actually the easy part, understanding each other, that’s where the real work begins.

I realised something fascinating in recent years. Two people can genuinely love each other and still walk away feeling unseen, unappreciated or even unloved and not because the love wasn’t there, but because it arrived in a language the other person didn’t naturally understand.Imagine someone writing you the most beautiful poem in Japanese and you don’t speak a single word of Japanese. It might be the greatest declaration of love ever written, but if you don’t understand Japanese, all you hear are sounds. That doesn’t mean the love isn’t real, it means the translation is missing. Does it make sense?

Maybe relationships work like that too. Someone spends every Saturday fixing things around the house because that’s how they say I love you. The other person just wishes they would sit down for ten minutes, hold their hand and ask, “How are you really doing?” Both leave disappointed. One thinks, “After everything I do…”, the other thinks, “You never make time for me.” Both are right and both are wrong. I find that strangely beautiful because it means many relationships aren’t lacking love, they’re lacking translation.

We also have this funny habit of assuming that everyone experiences love the way we do. If I love through words, I naturally believe words matter most. If I feel loved through physical affection, I assume hugs should solve almost everything. If someone brings me coffee every morning, I might think, Well, that’s nice. Meanwhile, for them, that coffee carries the exact same meaning as saying I adore you. It makes me wonder how many times people have loved me in ways I simply failed to recognise and how many times I have done exactly the same.

The dangerous sentence in relationships isn’t “We don’t love each other anymore.”, it’s “If you loved me, you would…”, because the rest of that sentence usually isn’t about love, it’s about that translation.

“…you would text me more.“,  “...you would buy me flowers.”,  “…you would stop buying flowers and actually spend time with me.”, “…you would tell me.“, “...you wouldn’t have to tell me.” …

It’s fascinating that two people can be standing in exactly the same room, overflowing with love for each other, while both secretly wondering if the other one cares. Both people may be expressing enormous amounts of love, but simply transmitting on different frequencies. One keeps filling the fuel tank with diesel while the other runs on petrol. The intention is beautiful, the result… not so much.

Somewhere along the way, we were sold the idea that true love means someone should just know. Know what we need. Know what hurts. Know what makes us feel safe. Know when to hug us and when to leave us alone. But none of us came with an instruction manual, we’re not mind readers, we’re translators, I would say, or at least, we should become one. Maybe one of the most romantic questions we can ask isn’t “Do you love me?”, but maybe it’s: “How do you experience love?” That question has no ego in it, only curiosity and I think curiosity might be one of the purest forms of love because when you’re curious about someone, you keep discovering them, you stop assuming, you stop projecting yourself onto them, you stop believing that your way is the only way.

Here’s something I also learned. Our preferred love language can change. Life changes us, grief changes us, parenthood changes us, stress changes us. Sometimes the person who once wanted flowers every Friday simply needs someone to make them a cup of tea after a difficult day. Sometimes the independent person who never needed reassurance suddenly longs to hear, “I’m not going anywhere.” Our emotional needs evolve, which means curiosity should never disappear from a relationship.

The version of me ten years ago probably needed something very different than the version writing these words today. Maybe that’s why relationships should never stop asking questions. The moment we believe we completely know another human being, we stop paying attention and people are always changing, every single day.

So perhaps love isn’t about finding someone who naturally speaks your language. Perhaps it’s finding someone who looks at your strange, complicated emotional dictionary and says, “I don’t speak this yet… but you’re worth learning.”

If you ask me, that’s probably one of the most beautiful declarations of love there is.

Until next time… keep loving, keep translating. ❤️❤️❤️