It has somehow become taboo to admit that you want to be loved.

Like, ewwww. There are so many other things to aspire to in life. A career. Money. Purpose. Fulfilment. Inner peace. Property. A six-figure business.

Apparently, you can publicly announce that you want to become a millionaire before thirty and nobody blinks, but say you would quite like to fall in love and suddenly shame go dey catch you.

Wanting love has somehow been filed under embarrassing human desires. Too needy. Too dependent. Too unserious. Especially if you are a woman. You are supposed to want success. You are supposed to want freedom. You are supposed to want to travel the world, build an empire, become emotionally self-sufficient and eventually reach a level of enlightenment where another human being’s presence or absence has absolutely no effect on you.

But wanting someone to love you? Please stand up. The council would like a word.

The funny thing is, I spent most of my early adolescence hating on the entire concept of love because it made absolutely no sense to me.

At eleven, I was certain that love was something I would never participate in because, in its rawest and most simplistic form, love seemed to me like an agreement to open yourself to an endless possibility of hurt. And why would anybody willingly sign that contract? Life is already hard enough as it is.

You meet someone. You like them. You become attached to them. You tell them things. They learn exactly where you are soft. They know your fears, your insecurities, the things capable of hurting you, and suddenly this random human being has been handed information that could potentially ruin your entire week. They can use your insecurities against you. They can wake up one day and stop loving you. They can leave. No thanks.

At twelve, though, I realised there was another reason I hated the idea of love. I could not fathom the possibility of someone loving a person I despised but was eternally stuck with.

Me.

I think that was the first time I realised that loving someone and allowing yourself to be loved are two entirely different concepts. Because when you do not particularly like yourself, somebody liking you feels suspicious. What exactly are you seeing? Have you not looked properly? Do you have no standards? Perhaps there has been an administrative error.

At fourteen, I started looking for evidence that romantic love was some kind of temporary mental defect. And boy, did I find it. People became irrational. They cried. They embarrassed themselves. They forgave things they swore they would never forgive. They stayed when common sense suggested they should leave. They lost sleep. They wrote paragraphs. Entirely unserious behaviour. I collected examples like evidence for the prosecution. You see?

At seventeen, something shifted. I wanted to be loved. I just didn’t particularly want the inconvenience of loving the person back. Which, in hindsight, was quite an ambitious arrangement. I wanted the flowers without the vulnerability. The reassurance without the responsibility. The devotion without having to hand anyone enough of myself to hurt me. I wanted someone to choose me while I remained safely behind glass.

Look, but do not touch. Love me, but please don’t expect access.

And perhaps that was when I started understanding the strange power dynamics involved in love. How easily the scale can tip. One person cares a little more, needs a little more reassurance, is a little more afraid of losing the other and somewhere in that imbalance, wanting love started becoming humiliating.

I still wonder when that happened. At what point did admitting that you wanted someone to choose you become more embarrassing than pretending you could not care less?

We have built an entire culture around appearing unbothered. Never let them know you care. Don’t double text. If they wanted to, they would. Everyone is performing emotional indifference while simultaneously writing songs, making films, publishing books and losing their minds over exactly the thing we are all pretending not to care about.

Which is especially funny because society cannot seem to decide what it actually thinks about love. Wanting love is embarrassing. But being single for too long is apparently also suspicious.

So which one is it? Are we supposed to desire love or transcend the desire entirely?

Perhaps the embarrassment is not really about love. Perhaps it is about wanting.

There is something exposing about admitting desire, because desire reveals where rejection can reach you. To say I want to be loved is also, in some small way, to acknowledge the possibility that you might not be. And indifference is much safer. If you never wanted it, you can never be rejected from it. If you never cared, nobody can embarrass you. If love is stupid, everyone who hurts you for the sake of it simply proves your point.

There is armour in cynicism.

I should know.

I still think love resembles a mental illness. One that should probably be studied extensively and added somewhere under illnesses caused by mismatched brain chemistry. Because people in love are objectively a little mad. Perfectly sensible adults suddenly begin smiling at their phones. People cross continents. They rearrange entire lives. They write poetry despite having no previous interest in literature. They forgive grammatical errors they would ordinarily consider unforgivable. Madness.

Except society has decided that this particular form of madness is acceptable. Encouraged, even. Required, depending on which auntie you ask.

And maybe that is what makes the whole thing so funny. We spend half our lives being taught not to appear too eager for love and the other half being asked why we haven’t found it yet.

Want it, but not too much. Care, but never more than the other person. Be vulnerable, but maintain your dignity. Fall in love, but for God’s sake, don’t look desperate doing it.

STAY SHINING