It is easy to love them as you want, but hard to love them as they want
The difference between loving and being loving
Love is not as simple as giving what you have. Sometimes, it asks you to give what you never learned to give.
It is easy to love people in the way that feels natural to you. It is harder to love them in the way they actually need to be loved.
We often believe that our way of loving is enough.
We offer affection, advice, or attention in the language we understand best. But love that does not consider the other person’s language risks becoming a mirror; it reflects us to ourselves instead of truly seeing them.
The writer Stephen R. Covey once said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
That is to love.
To understand before you act. To listen before you speak.
To observe what the other person values, not just what you wish to give.
Many relationships break not from lack of love but from lack of translation.
One person offers words when the other needs presence. One gives gifts when the other craves touch. One seeks reassurance while the other seeks space. The intention is pure, but the expression misses its mark.
Real love asks for humility. It asks you to admit that your instincts might not be enough. It invites you to study the person before you, to learn their patterns and fears. It challenges your comfort.
The author bell hooks wrote, “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”
Action means effort. It means the willingness to grow beyond your habits. Loving someone as they want to be loved is an act of generosity because it requires stepping outside yourself.
It also requires patience. People change. Their needs evolve. The way you love them today may not be the way they need to be loved tomorrow. This is why love cannot stay static. It must adapt, listen, and evolve alongside them.
Loving someone as they want to be loved is not about losing yourself.
It is about expanding yourself. It is about holding the balance between giving authentically and giving attentively. It is the understanding that love is not ownership but stewardship.
As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
To love someone truly is to walk beside them, seeing life through their eyes while still keeping your own open.
It is easy to love them as you want. It is harder, braver, and more beautiful to love them as they wish to be loved. That is the kind of love that grows. The kind that lasts. The kind that teaches you how to see beyond yourself.
May we all learn to love that way!