There’s a tender kind of ache that settles in when you find yourself constantly explaining how to be loved.
When you’re always guiding, correcting, reminding, hoping they’ll get it right next time. At first, it feels like patience. Then it begins to feel like performance.
Because the truth is, love shouldn’t be a lesson plan. It should be a rhythm—natural, intuitive, and honest. It should feel like being seen, not like being studied.
You can offer clarity. You can communicate. And you can open your heart with courage. But it’s not your job to convince someone to care for it gently.
It’s not your responsibility to coach someone into loving you the way you deserve.
That kind of love always ends in exhaustion—because the moment you stop teaching, the effort stops too. And love that depends entirely on your instruction isn’t really love. It’s obligation dressed up in affection.
Love Is Not Meant to Feel Like Work for Only One Person
You can’t carry a relationship on your back. You can’t keep explaining the same things over and over, hoping they’ll eventually understand that your needs aren’t demands—they’re reflections of your heart.
When you love someone, you want to be known without needing to beg for that knowing. You want to be held in your softness, not questioned for needing it. You want your boundaries respected without having to defend them like a courtroom trial.
And if you’re always exhausted in love, always compensating for someone else’s lack of effort, it’s time to ask yourself a hard question: Am I being loved, or am I managing someone’s inability to love me fully?
You Deserve to Be Loved Without Needing to Translate Yourself
There are people out there who will feel you deeply, without needing everything spelled out.
People who listen closely. Those who watch the way you retreat when you’re overwhelmed.
People who notice the quiet shift in your tone when you’re hurt. Those who reach for you—not just when you ask, but because they want to.
You don’t have to mold yourself into a version someone finally understands. The right person will be fluent in your presence.
They’ll meet your energy without asking you to shrink it. They’ll recognize your silence as a space to lean into, not something to escape.
Yes, relationships take effort. Yes, communication matters. But when love feels like you’re constantly overexplaining your worth, you’re not in a relationship—you’re in a rescue mission.
Stop Settling for Almost Love
The hardest thing to admit is that love alone is not enough. Not if it lacks consistency.
Not if it lacks safety and respect. You can deeply care for someone who isn’t willing or capable of loving you in a way that honors your heart.
And staying in that kind of love only teaches you to tolerate your own unmet needs.
You were not created to feel invisible in a relationship. And you weren’t made to chase reassurance, to constantly re-teach your worth, to wonder if you’re asking for too much.
You are not too much. You are just enough for the right person.
Letting go of “almost” love is hard—but it creates space for real love.
Love that doesn’t require you to be anyone but exactly who you are.
Love that recognizes your needs not as burdens, but as invitations.
What to Do When You’re Always the Teacher in Love
If you find yourself stuck in a cycle of explaining and hoping, there are gentle ways to step out of that pattern and back into your own power:
- Get honest with yourself. Are you loved, or are you constantly managing the relationship to feel loved?
- Redefine your boundaries. Boundaries aren’t punishments. They’re clarity. You have the right to say what is not okay—and walk away when it’s ignored.
- Stop trying to be “easier” to love. You don’t have to shrink your emotions to make someone stay.
- Look for reciprocity. Healthy love is mutual. You shouldn’t always be the one fixing, explaining, or leading the emotional work.
- Allow space. Sometimes walking away is the most loving thing you can do—for both of you.
You Are Not Asking for Too Much—You’re Asking the Wrong Person
You were never meant to carry the emotional weight of a relationship alone.
It was never your job to explain simple acts of kindness or have the same conversations over and over again just to feel seen.
Real love listens the first time. Real love learns because it wants to—not because it’s forced to.
So if someone couldn’t love you the way you needed, it doesn’t mean you were unlovable. It means they weren’t ready to rise to the level of love you deserve.
And that’s not your failure. That’s your freedom.
ᡣ𐭩 Love Always,
Kemi ᡣ𐭩
