Exploring The Systems of Love and Why They Can Be Harmful

In today’s fast-paced world, it often feels like we’re never truly satisfied. Life isn’t what we imagined it to be, or at least, not what we thought it would feel like. I believe this persistent void many of us experience comes from a lack of love, not just romantic love, but love in its most expansive, human form.

We live within systems that capitalize on our beliefs about love: what it should look like, how it should feel, and when it should arrive. We’re all waiting in this proverbial waiting room, hoping “the one” will come along and make us feel complete. But didn’t we come into this world alone? That must mean we were whole from the beginning.

As we move through life, we face so many emotions, sadness, confusion, longing, and we try to soothe them with surface-level fixes: working out, spending time with friends, keeping ourselves busy. Sometimes it helps. But eventually, those feelings return.

I used to think they were just passing moods. But with time, I realized the emptiness I felt wasn’t just emotional, it was existential. It stemmed not only from a lack of love, but from unhealed wounds, from not being seen or truly accepted. I’m not a psychologist, just a curious human, fascinated by why we feel what we feel.

What I’ve come to understand is this: I have to be present with who I am. And when I show up for myself in that way, life begins to respond with more clarity, more alignment, more truth.

Being single isn’t a pause, it’s a path. It means learning to enjoy your own company and creating a home within yourself. Not so you can be better for someone else, but because you deserve to feel safe and whole within your own being. And that kind of self-love? It’s not an aesthetic. It’s not a slogan. It’s raw. It’s emotional. It’s real.

When you don’t truly know love in its full, imperfect, holistic form, it’s easy to fall for a version of it that only mimics the real thing, a system that looks like love on the surface, but leaves you feeling hollow.

Because love, as it’s presented today, often is a system, one that frames leadership and submission as threats instead of balance, one that turns connection into performance and comparison. Our desire for intimacy is constantly manipulated into something marketable, something shallow.

And social media amplifies it. We’re bombarded with curated couples and polished affection, stripped of the vulnerability that makes love meaningful. Real love is chaotic, tender, flawed. But what we’re shown is filtered, and ultimately, unfulfilling.

So how can we create something meaningful when we’re always comparing ourselves to something manufactured? When we allow others to define what our relationships should feel like?

Shouldn’t love be something you recognize within yourself, something that doesn’t need anyone’s approval to be real? Why do we let outside validation become the proof of our deepest experiences?