How to be Love(d)
Simple Truths for Going Easier on Yourself, Embracing Imperfection & Loving Your Way to a Better Life
Book Edition Details
Summary
What if the love you seek has been within you all along? In "How to Be Love(d)," Humble The Poet dismantles the myths that cloud our hearts and complicate our lives. With raw honesty and relatable narratives, this international best-selling author invites you to embark on an introspective journey where self-love is not an end goal but a continuous unfolding. Reject the notion that love must be earned or achieved; instead, recognize it as your inherent state of being. By shedding societal expectations and embracing the beauty of imperfection, you’ll discover that love is messy, authentic, and profoundly real. This transformative guide clears the path for love to flourish within and around you, offering practical wisdom to enrich your connection with yourself and others. Prepare to liberate your heart, celebrate your progress, and redefine what it means to truly love and be loved.
Introduction
There's a moment in every relationship when the mask slips, when the performance ends, and you're left standing naked in front of someone who suddenly sees you for who you really are. For many of us, that moment feels like stepping off a cliff into darkness, uncertain whether we'll be caught or allowed to fall. This terror of being truly seen, truly known, reveals something profound about the human condition: our desperate hunger for authentic connection coupled with our paralyzing fear of rejection. Most of us spend our lives chasing love in all the wrong places, mistaking attention for affection, validation for value, and possession for partnership. We've been fed fairy tales about soulmates and perfect matches, leaving us unprepared for the messy, complicated, beautiful reality of what it means to love and be loved. We search frantically for someone to complete us, not realizing we're already whole. We demand unconditional love from others while being harshly conditional with ourselves. But what if everything we think we know about love is backwards? What if the path to being loved begins not with finding the right person, but with learning to be the right person for ourselves? Through raw honesty, vulnerable storytelling, and hard-won wisdom, this exploration will challenge everything you believe about love, relationships, and your own worthiness. You'll discover that the greatest love story you'll ever write isn't with someone else—it's with yourself. And once you master that relationship, every other connection in your life will transform in ways you never imagined possible.
Understanding Love: Beyond Disney Dreams and Social Media Illusions
The first time I truly understood what love wasn't came during a conversation with a data scientist who had analyzed billions of internet searches about desire and relationships. She told me about research showing that men typically searched for visual content while women gravitated toward stories—specifically tales of taming wild hearts, transforming bad boys, and unlocking the hidden softness beneath rough exteriors. These weren't just random preferences; they revealed something deeper about how we've been programmed to understand love through fantasy rather than reality. I thought about my own romantic history and realized how often I'd fallen for potential rather than presence. There was the artist who would "find her passion" once she got her life together, the entrepreneur who would "prioritize our relationship" after his business took off, the commitment-phobic charmer who would "open up emotionally" if I could just prove my worth. Each time, I convinced myself that love meant seeing the diamond beneath the coal, that my patience and persistence would eventually unlock their hidden capacity for connection. This pattern extended beyond romantic relationships. I watched friends exhaust themselves trying to transform family members who showed no interest in changing, staying in friendships that drained rather than nourished them, and accepting jobs that promised future fulfillment while delivering present misery. We'd all become emotional investors, pouring our energy into relationships based on projected returns rather than current reality. The media we consume reinforces these distorted expectations. Disney movies teach us that love conquers all through grand gestures and dramatic transformations. Romantic comedies compress the messy work of building connection into ninety-minute narratives where obstacles dissolve through witty dialogue and perfect timing. Social media presents curated highlight reels that make everyone else's relationships appear effortlessly blissful. These stories aren't just entertainment; they're blueprints that shape our expectations and leave us perpetually disappointed by ordinary human imperfection. Real love isn't about fixing broken people or being fixed by them. It's about seeing clearly—with eyes wide open rather than hearts clouded by projection—and choosing to build something meaningful with another imperfect human being. When we stop chasing fairy tale endings and start appreciating present moments, love becomes less about finding someone to complete us and more about sharing our already-complete selves with others who are brave enough to do the same.
The Foundation of Self-Love: Being Your Own Best Friend
I was sitting on my therapist's couch, complaining about feeling lonely despite having countless people in my life who genuinely cared about me. Messages of support flooded my phone daily, friends invited me to gatherings, and family members regularly checked in on my wellbeing. Yet none of it seemed to penetrate the wall of isolation I'd built around myself. My therapist asked a simple question that stopped me cold: "If you can't receive the love that's already surrounding you, what makes you think finding more love will solve the problem?" The question haunted me for weeks. I began paying attention to how I responded when people complimented my work, celebrated my successes, or simply expressed affection. Instead of saying "thank you," I'd deflect with self-deprecating jokes. When someone praised something I'd accomplished, I'd immediately list all the ways I could have done better. If a friend expressed concern during difficult times, I'd minimize my struggles to avoid being a burden. I was like a person dying of thirst while standing next to a well, too convinced of my own unworthiness to drink. This pattern revealed something crucial: I was treating myself with less kindness than I'd show to a stranger. I'd comfort friends through heartbreaks with patience and compassion, then berate myself for similar struggles. I'd encourage others to pursue their dreams while talking myself out of mine. I'd forgive friends their mistakes while cataloging my own failures as evidence of fundamental inadequacy. The relationship I'd neglected most in my life was the one with myself. Learning to be your own best friend isn't about positive affirmations or self-help mantras. It's about developing the same genuine care, curiosity, and compassion for yourself that you'd naturally extend to someone you truly love. It means celebrating your victories without minimizing them, comforting yourself through defeats without harsh judgment, and speaking to yourself with the same kindness you'd use with a good friend going through hard times. This internal shift changes everything external. When you stop desperately seeking validation from others, you become more attractive to be around. When you no longer need people to complete you, you can appreciate them for who they are rather than what they might become. When your self-worth isn't dependent on external approval, you're free to take risks, speak truthfully, and show up authentically in all your relationships. The love you've been searching for everywhere else has been waiting patiently inside you all along.
Building Healthy Relationships: From Codependence to True Connection
My friend Kyle and Stu had what everyone considered the perfect relationship. They lived together for three years, complementing each other beautifully despite having completely different personalities. Their wedding was magical—the kind that made single people believe in love again and married couples remember why they'd taken vows in the first place. What struck me most wasn't the ceremony itself, but a habit they'd developed afterward that seemed almost mundane yet profoundly meaningful. Every morning during their walk, Stu would get down on one knee and propose to Kyle again. Every single day, without fail, Kyle would say yes. There was no audience to perform for, no cameras capturing the moment, no social media posts documenting their devotion. It was simply two people choosing each other repeatedly, making their commitment fresh rather than taking it for granted. While other couples around them were struggling with the transition from honeymoon phase to real life, Kyle and Stu had found a way to renew their connection daily. This ritual revealed something profound about the difference between relationships built on need versus those built on choice. Codependent relationships operate from scarcity—partners cling to each other out of fear, desperation, and the belief that they can't survive alone. Healthy relationships operate from abundance—two complete individuals choosing to share their lives because it enhances rather than completes them. The daily proposal wasn't about insecurity or possessiveness; it was about conscious commitment. I contrasted this with relationships I'd seen crumble under the weight of expectation and control. Partners who monitored each other's phones, friends who demanded constant reassurance, family members who used guilt as a weapon to maintain connection. These dynamics create prisons disguised as love, where intimacy becomes suffocation and care becomes control. People lose themselves trying to be what others need them to be, then resent the very people they've exhausted themselves trying to please. True intimacy requires the courage to remain separate while choosing to be together. It means maintaining your own interests, friendships, and identity while building something beautiful with another person. It requires honest communication about needs and boundaries, the ability to say no without guilt, and the wisdom to love someone enough to let them be themselves even when it's inconvenient for you. Like Kyle and Stu's daily proposals, it's about making love a verb rather than a noun—something you do consistently rather than something you simply feel occasionally.
When Love Requires Letting Go: Endings as New Beginnings
The puppy looked at me with innocent curiosity as tears fell onto the patterns of the rug beneath us. She had no idea that the world was ending, that the family she'd known was about to split apart, that the people who'd brought her into existence as a symbol of their shared future were now negotiating the terms of their separation. In her simple animal wisdom, she seized the moment to grab tissues from my trembling hands, probably enjoying the salt of my tears without understanding their significance. I hadn't gone there to break up. I'd been thinking about ending things for months, maybe years, but thinking and doing are separated by an ocean of fear, hope, and stubborn attachment to what we wish could be true. She was asking about couples therapy, speaking optimistically about the lessons she was learning during our "break," planning a future that felt simultaneously possible and impossible. The words she needed to hear—that I was too scared to hurt her, too scared of disappointing everyone, too scared of proving her skeptical sister right—felt too heavy to voice and too important to leave unsaid. Her response revealed the kind of grace that develops only through genuine love. Instead of bargaining or demanding explanations, she gave me permission to choose what was right for me, even as that choice was breaking her heart. She wasn't thinking about herself in that moment; she was thinking about my wellbeing, my future, my need to do what felt authentic rather than what felt safe. This is what real love looks like when it's tested—not possessiveness or manipulation, but the courage to want what's best for someone even when it costs you everything. The hardest part wasn't the immediate pain of that conversation. It was recognizing that sometimes loving someone means acknowledging when love isn't enough. We can love someone deeply while also recognizing that we bring out each other's worst tendencies. We can care for someone immensely while admitting that our visions for the future are incompatible. We can appreciate someone's beautiful qualities while understanding that those qualities deserve someone who can fully receive and reciprocate them. Endings aren't always failures; sometimes they're acts of profound love. They require the wisdom to distinguish between giving up and letting go, between quitting and releasing. When we cling to relationships past their natural expiration date, we often transform love into resentment, tenderness into toxicity, and beautiful memories into bitter regrets. But when we have the courage to end things with grace—to honor what was while accepting what can no longer be—we create space for new forms of love to emerge, both within ourselves and in future connections that we can't yet imagine.
Summary
Love, as it turns out, is both simpler and more complex than we've been taught to believe. It's simpler because it doesn't require perfect circumstances, flawless people, or fairy tale endings. Love exists in the mundane moments, the daily choices, the quiet commitments that happen when no one is watching. It's more complex because it demands the hardest thing humans are asked to do: see clearly without the filters of projection, need, or fantasy, and choose connection anyway. The greatest revelation in understanding love is that it begins not with finding the right person, but with becoming the right person for yourself. Every external relationship mirrors our internal landscape. When we learn to speak to ourselves with kindness, to celebrate our imperfections rather than hide them, and to choose growth over comfort, we naturally attract others who are doing the same work. Love isn't something we earn through achievement or lose through failure; it's something we practice daily through small acts of courage, honesty, and grace. Whether we're building new relationships or deepening existing ones, the principles remain consistent: see people as they are rather than who they might become, communicate needs clearly rather than expecting others to read our minds, and maintain your own identity while choosing to share it generously. Sometimes love means holding on, sometimes it means letting go, but it always means choosing truth over comfort and connection over control. In the end, the love we give and receive is determined not by finding perfect people, but by becoming the kind of person who can love imperfect people well—starting with ourselves.
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By Humble the Poet
