When Love isn't Love

For some people, the idea of love is distorted long before they are old enough to understand what love truly is.

From a young age, she believed that desire equalled affection. If a man wanted her, if he touched her, if he pursued her sexually, then that must mean love. It felt logical in a world where no one explained the difference, where attention was confused with care, and where silence filled the gaps that adults should have spoken into.

Time and maturity revealed how profoundly wrong that belief was.

In her early teens, there were moments that sat uncomfortably between danger and damage, near misses that could have gone further, incidents that crossed lines, touches that should never have happened. Men who should have known better didn’t.

And when it happened, there was no language for it, no safe adult to turn to, no framework that named it as abuse. It was simply something that happened, something to carry quietly.

This was the 1980s, a very different era. Today, there are campaigns, conversations, safeguarding policies, and a growing collective voice determined to protect girls and women.

Back then, the landscape was starkly different. These were the Jimmy Savile years: a time when power protected perpetrators and children were expected to endure discomfort without question. Groping, boundary violations, and inappropriate behaviour were minimised, dismissed, or ignored altogether.

Those early experiences didn’t just hurt in the moment; they shaped beliefs. They set a precedent that sex was currency for connection, that being wanted physically meant being valued emotionally.

That misunderstanding followed her into adulthood, quietly steering choices and relationships.

As a result, she was hurt, repeatedly. She gave intimacy believing it would lead to care, only to discover that some people wanted nothing beyond the moment itself. Morning came, and with it, distance. What felt like love to her was, to them, convenience or conquest.

Each time reinforced the same painful lesson, wanting someone’s body is not the same as wanting their heart.

When love is wrong, it doesn’t always feel wrong at first. Sometimes it feels like validation. Sometimes it feels like safety. Sometimes it feels like being chosen. But love that costs self-worth, love that thrives on silence, love that leaves emptiness instead of connection, that is not love at all.

Understanding this takes years. It takes unlearning beliefs formed too early and under the wrong conditions. It takes compassion for the younger self who did the best they could with what they knew.

And it takes courage to say, out loud and without shame, that love should never begin with fear, confusion, or harm.

Because love, real love, does not wound and disappear by morning.