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For a long time in my early adult life, I struggled to create the intimacy and love I wanted.
But I couldn’t put my finger on why.
I had so much of what the world told me I should have to attract a great partner—I was smart, kind, and ambitious. I did good, heartful work in the world. I knew how to hold a conversation. I worked on myself.
And yet, there I was, consistently alone or somehow dissatisfied in my relationships.
It wasn’t fair!
It felt like the world was against me.
So what did I do? I looked for all the reasons I wasn’t able to have the love I so badly wanted.
At first, I blamed external factors—the women I was dating, the timing, the culture, maybe even bad luck. But deep down, I knew there was something else. Some hidden barrier keeping me stuck.
After a few good conversations with close friends and family, I realized I was somehow cut off from my own heart and the love I wanted.
That’s when I started digging.
And, ultimately, what I found was this: I had no established internal model for love.
When I started to connect the dots, things started to make so much sense.
My parents were never really together. I mean, they had a brief love affair—fast, fleeting, and all over before I was born. I didn’t see them together. Ever. There was no messy divorce, no heated custody battles, no moments where I had to navigate their tension. Their relationship had already ended by the time I took my first breath.
And because it was never there, I didn’t consciously miss it.
But that’s the thing about absence—it leaves an imprint just as much as presence does.
I didn’t grow up watching two people navigate partnership. I didn’t see them argue and then repair. I didn’t witness the unspoken rhythms of a long-term commitment—the little touches, the shared glances, the way real love is built in the small, ordinary moments.
Without realizing it, I carried that void into every relationship I tried to create.
I didn’t know how to handle conflict because I’d never seen healthy conflict resolved.
I didn’t know what love looked like when it lasted because I’d only ever seen it disappear.
I didn’t trust connection to stay because, in my world, it never had.
I thought romantic love was something I had to earn, to go out and find and bring back to my life, not something I could simply invite in, have, and share.
And that belief had been shaping everything.
I held back. I played it safe. I hesitated when I should have leaned in. I sought perfection because, deep down, I feared that if a relationship wasn’t flawless, it would inevitably end.
For a long time, this made me angry.
I envied the men who seemed to have it all figured out. The ones who had parents who modeled what love looked like. The ones who naturally knew how to show up with confidence, security, and presence. The ones who seemed to get relationships right without having to dissect every tiny misstep.
I resented the fact that I had to work to understand something that seemed to come so easily to others.
I know now that that too was a fantasy.
We all have to reach and stumble and flail around as we figure out how to genuinely sustain love with others.
For a while though, I let that resentment keep me stuck.
But here’s the thing about missing pieces—you can either let the gaps define you, or you can take responsibility for the work that’s needed to fill them in.
That’s what growing up means.
That’s what becoming a man is.
I had to unlearn a lot of what I thought love was supposed to be. I had to break down my fears of rejection, of failure, of not being enough. I had to teach myself how to trust, how to communicate, how to stay present even when intimacy felt uncomfortable.
And it wasn’t easy.
There were a lot of mistakes, a lot of painful lessons, and a lot of moments when I wanted to give up.
But I didn’t.
And what I’ve come to realize is this: not having a model for love doesn’t mean you can’t create one.
It just means you have to be intentional. Courageous. Consistent.
If you resonate with this—if you’ve ever felt like you should have figured this out by now, like love is somehow just out of reach—know this: You’re not broken. You’re just carrying some incomplete pieces.
And the good news? You can build them.
Because love isn’t something that just happens—it’s something we consciously choose to create more of.
~
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