Love Me This Way
Happy first Sunday of July, and welcome back to the Undoing Toxic Blog. Remember to subscribe to never miss another update.
Today, I want to explore what it really means to be loved—and to love—beyond the scripts and controls we carry. The phrase “love me this way” came to mind and stuck with me. This is not intended to be a kinky blog but rather a deeper look at how we try to direct and control something limitless called love. Let us consider all relationships and connections where we expect love to be present, shared, and reciprocated.
When we talk about love, people often ask: “What’s your love language?” But maybe the better question is: “What’s your love position?” Have you ever thought about how you position yourself in relationships? Do you lead? Do you chase? Do you shrink? Do you fix? Do you perform? Do you pull away? Do you wait to be chosen? What comes up for you when you ask these questions? If we were in session, I would say your love language(s) and attachment style are trying to tell you something.
If you are not familiar with the Five Love Languages, here they are:
Words of Affirmation are verbal expressions of appreciation, love, or encouragement. In romantic relationships, it might sound like “I love you,” “You mean so much to me,” or complimenting your partner's growth. Non-romantically, it's texting a friend “I’m proud of you” or telling a coworker “You handled that really well.”
Acts of Service involve doing something helpful to show you care. Romantically, it could be cooking dinner after your partner’s long day or running an errand for them. Non-romantic examples include helping a sibling move or covering a shift for a colleague who's overwhelmed.
Receiving Gifts is about thoughtfulness and meaning, not price. In romantic settings, it might be flowers “just because” or a surprise coffee. Platonically, it’s gifting a book that reminded you of a friend or mailing a care package to a loved one.
Quality Time is about undivided attention and presence. With a partner, it could be a long walk, no phones, just talking. It could also be catching up with a friend over lunch or planning a sibling game night where everyone feels included.
Physical Touch is any kind of nurturing contact. That could include cuddling or holding hands, a warm hug, a hand on the shoulder, etc.
We all have a love language that corresponds to how we express love. And, we also have a love language in which we expect or prefer to receive love from others. And this is very important because love languages can be the basis for compatibility or major discord in relationships. Love languages blew up in the relationship and dating realm because it provided a map for us to understand how we give and receive love.
Your Love Language Isn’t Just A Preference
Many of us learn to identify our love language as a simple preference and something to answer on a first date. When you look deeper, your love language often reveals more than just how you like to give or receive love. It reflects how you have learned to protect yourself in relationships, especially if your early experiences with love were complicated, unpredictable, or unsafe.
You might say you value quality time, yet find yourself feeling restless or uncomfortable in moments of stillness or silence with others. That discomfort is not about wanting connection—it’s about how vulnerability and closeness have felt risky or overwhelming before. So your brain says, “Engage, but keep it moving. Don’t get stuck.” And if you are avoidant, you may even say, let me disengage or leave before this person leaves or hurts me.
Or you might crave words of affirmation, but when someone offers a genuine compliment or praise, you quickly dismiss it or push it away. This is not because you don’t want to be loved, but because the words trigger old wounds—maybe you learned that praise was conditional or rare, or that hearing compliments felt like a setup for later disappointment. So your heart protects itself by deflecting.
Maybe you are a giver and align with acts of service—always the one doing, fixing, helping—until you burn out. You hope that by showing how much you give, someone will finally “see” you, recognize your worth, or love you fully. But deep down, this drive can be less about generosity and more about trying to earn safety in love—a way to control the unpredictable by proving your value through action.
In these ways, love languages can become coping strategies dressed up as compatibility. They’re not just preferences; they’re adaptations. They’re the way you say, “Love me like this, so I don’t have to feel unsafe.” That means sometimes what you think you want in love is actually what you’ve learned will keep you from being hurt—or feeling abandoned, unseen, or unworthy. And that’s important to recognize—not to shame yourself, but to begin untangling patterns that no longer serve you.
When you move beyond just “this is my love language,” and start asking, “Why is this what I need? What am I protecting?”—you open the door to deeper healing, to grow, to feel safer, and to receive love that isn’t just familiar, but truly nourishing.
Attachment Shows Up in the Subtitles
Attachment isn’t just a psychological theory—it’s the silent narrator running beneath the surface of every relationship. It’s the unspoken script guiding how we show up, how we expect others to show up, and what we need to feel safe and seen.
We often identify attachment styles in simple terms:
Anxious attachment whispers, “If I just do everything right, maybe I won’t be abandoned.”
Avoidant attachment insists, “If I stay self-sufficient, no one can hurt me.”
And secure attachment offers a softer truth: “I can be close and still be me. I can receive love without having to earn it.”
But in my years as a relational therapist—and as someone who has lived through these patterns—I have come to understand that attachment is much more than these labels. It’s also a recipe for disaster when we become fixated on our expectations—how we want love to look, how people should behave, or what the “right” version of a relationship must be. We may find ourselves trying to shape others to fit our blueprint of safety and love, but what we’re really doing is trying to control the uncontrollable—human beings with their own fears, histories, and ways of loving.
Yung Pueblo’s How to Love Better beautifully captures this tension. The profound lesson I’m still grappling with is this: True love is not about molding someone to our needs, but about allowing them to show up authentically—even if that looks different than what we imagined.
It means letting go of the urge to control, to fix, or to manage the relationship like a project that needs perfect execution. Instead, it invites us to practice presence—to hold space for others without expectations, to be curious rather than reactive, to embrace imperfection. When relationships leave us anxious, exhausted, or resentful, the problem often isn’t the other person’s capacity to love. It’s the degree of control we try to exert just to feel safe. That grip tightens our hearts instead of opening them.
The path toward healing attachment wounds isn’t about perfecting others or ourselves. It’s about surrendering the fantasy of control and meeting love as it is—with vulnerability, acceptance, and radical openness.
Control Is a Temptation—But It’s Not Intimacy
Trying to control how someone loves you isn’t love. It feels like love. It sounds like love—because it comes wrapped in care, concern, and longing. But it’s not love. It’s protection.
Control is fear wearing a disguise.
It’s old wounds whispering, “If you love me exactly this way, maybe I won’t get hurt.”
It’s a desperate attempt to script the story of your safety, to set the rules for how love should look, so you can avoid disappointment, abandonment, or betrayal.
Control says:
“If you just said these words.”
“If you just acted this way.”
“If you loved me like I want, I can relax.”
But here’s the truth that sets people free:
Love isn’t about meeting a checklist. It’s about showing up—imperfectly, vulnerably, and honestly.
The real work is learning to let go of the version of love that keeps you locked in survival mode. That version of love is conditional, transactional, and exhausting. It asks you to micromanage feelings, reactions, and behaviors, because without that, the fear feels too big.
Letting go means surrendering control over how others love you. It means making peace with uncertainty. It means trusting that love can exist—even when it doesn’t look like you expect. This doesn’t mean settling for less or ignoring red flags. It means cultivating a deep trust in yourself—your worth, your resilience, your capacity to hold space for love in its messy, unpredictable form.
When you release control, you invite intimacy—the kind of closeness that breathes, shifts, and grows. Intimacy that honors both people as whole beings, not projects to be fixed. It’s scary. Because control feels safe. But real safety comes from connection, not from control.
Can You Let Love Surprise You?
To love someone is to step into the unknown—to open yourself to the possibility of joy and heartbreak. It’s not just about risking pain or disappointment. The greater risk is allowing yourself to be truly seen—flaws, fears, and all. Vulnerability is the currency of love, and that means surrendering control over the story you want to tell about how love should look or feel.
Loving someone also means making peace with the fact that they may never love you in the exact way you would. Their love will be filtered through their own fears, wounds, and histories—just as yours is. The desire for love to fit neatly into your expectations is natural, but it’s also a cage. And when love becomes a cage, it no longer nurtures growth; it stifles it.
To be loved well is to stop micromanaging your own worth, to stop trying to earn love by performing or controlling. It’s the radical act of saying, “I am enough just as I am.” It’s choosing to receive love on someone else’s terms without losing yourself. Sometimes the healthiest love isn’t the one that ticks every box on your list or fits your exact blueprint. Sometimes, the healthiest love is the one that gently helps you put the checklist down—inviting you to rest, to relax, and to simply be.
Undoing Toxic: A Practice, Not a Perfection
If you’ve spent years—or even a lifetime—performing, fixing, controlling, or feeling like you have to earn your place in relationships, healing doesn’t come from flipping a switch. It’s not about perfection. It’s a messy, ongoing practice.
Start here:
Notice where you tighten up when things feel too soft. Pay attention to your body and mind. Where do you clench your fists? Where do you hold your breath? These are clues that something inside you feels unsafe.
Ask yourself: What am I protecting by staying in control? Is it your safety? Your pride? Your fear of abandonment? Sometimes control is a shield, and recognizing what it hides helps you gently lower it.
Practice receiving love—even when it doesn’t show up perfectly. Allow yourself to accept kindness, affection, or care without attaching conditions. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful.
Love doesn’t have to look like your past to be safe. And you don’t have to shrink, mute, or hide parts of yourself to be chosen or loved. Undoing toxic patterns means giving yourself permission to grow into the fullest, messiest, most authentic version of you—knowing that real love meets you there, not just the polished parts.
“Love me this way.” Not for perfection, but for presence. You deserve love that meets the real you. And the real you doesn’t have to perform for it.
If this blog resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts. How do you experience your love language or attachment style? What’s one way you practice letting love surprise you? Drop a comment, send a message, or connect with me on Instagram (@therapywithmo).
Let’s connect. Email me: moniqueevanstherapy@gmail.com
Accepting individual, couples, and family clients (self-pay and select insurance via headway.co- Monique Evans, LCSW)
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