*(not my writing)*
I read somewhere that broken women know how to love but not who to love, and broken men know who to love but not how to love — and the more I sit with it, the more it hits.
You see it everywhere. Women who’ve been through trauma still show up with their hearts wide open, hoping this time it’s safe. They love hard. They give pieces of themselves they never should’ve handed over.
They pour into people who don't know how to hold space for it. They stay loyal past the point of logic, holding out for potential instead of reality. They ignore the red flags, rewrite the truth, and hand out second chances like they do not cost anything — even when those chances are met with silence or carelessness that cuts deep.
The problem is, they often give that love to the wrong people — people who are unavailable, inconsistent, emotionally lazy, or flat-out wrong for them. They mistake attention for care. They confuse chemistry for connection. And they keep thinking if they just love harder, it’ll finally be enough.
Then there are men who’ve been broken differently. Men who know exactly who they love. They remember her — the one who saw through their walls, the one who made them feel something real. They don’t forget her.
But when they had the chance to show up, they froze. They pulled back. They sabotaged. They shut down, because caring felt dangerous. They disappeared into distractions, into silence, into everything except the one thing that could have saved the connection — effort.
Love asked them to be present, consistent, vulnerable — and that terrified them. Nobody ever showed them how to be emotionally available without losing their sense of control. So instead, they let her go. They didn't know how to stay, how to communicate, how to be emotionally available without feeling exposed.
And now they carry the weight of that loss quietly. No loud heartbreak, no scenes — just silent regret that lingers. The kind they pretend does not exist, but it always does.
That’s the tragic mismatch. She keeps loving the wrong ones. He keeps choosing the right one too late.
She needs to learn that love alone is not enough — that who she chooses matters just as much as how she loves.
He needs to learn that knowing who you love means nothing if you cannot show up and act on it.
Until both do their healing, they’ll stay stuck in that cycle.
One loving too much, the other staying quiet.
One giving more than they receive,
the other withholding what matters most.
Love takes more than emotion.
It takes timing, courage, and the willingness to stop repeating patterns that left you bleeding last time.
Wanting someone is easy.
Being ready to love them right is something else.