Sitting at my desk at work, I put on my headphones and let Crying City’s Lucky play softly in my ears. I try to focus on what I’m supposed to be writing, but my attention keeps drifting towards a group of colleagues talking nearby.
Even with my headphones on, I can still hear bits and pieces of their conversation. They’re talking about Fazura and Fattah’s divorce.
I don’t usually follow celebrity news, but hearing about them made me think about something I’ve wondered about for years.
How does love between two people change so much that they eventually decide they no longer want the life they once chose together?
I don’t know what happened in their marriage, and I don’t think anyone outside the relationship really does. There are always two people living a story that the rest of us only ever see from the outside.
Hearing about them did make me think about love.
I’ve always found it difficult to understand how two people can love each other deeply and then, somewhere along the way, become strangers to each other.
How does someone stop feeling the same way?
How does someone go from wanting a future with a person to no longer wanting that future?
How does something that once felt so important slowly become something they are willing to walk away from?
Maybe I’ve always struggled with these questions because love has always been a big part of how I see life.
I love to love.
I love making someone feel loved. I love remembering little things about someone, creating memories together, doing thoughtful things without being asked and knowing that the person beside me feels safe, valued and wanted.
For a long time, I believed that once you truly loved someone, you were supposed to keep choosing them forever.
I don’t quite see it that simply anymore.
I’ve come to realise that loving someone and being able to build a life together are two different things.
Two people can genuinely love each other and still grow in different directions. A relationship can become unhealthy. The things that once brought two people together aren’t always enough to keep them moving in the same direction.
People can simply stop putting in the effort.
That last part is what stays with me because I don’t think love always disappears in one dramatic moment. It can fade quietly through all the little things that slowly stop happening.
The conversations become shorter. The dates become less frequent. You stop asking how their day went. You stop remembering the things they once told you. You stop making plans together. You become so used to having each other that you forget to appreciate the person standing beside you.
Nothing necessarily breaks overnight.
You simply stop tending to it.
I think that’s why love needs to be cared for.
Not in the dramatic, “I’ll fight the whole world for you” kind of way I used to imagine.
In much smaller ways.
It can mean listening when you’re tired, communicating instead of shutting down, remembering what matters to your partner and making time for each other even when life gets busy. Showing affection in a way your partner actually understands matters too, as does noticing when something feels different instead of assuming everything will fix itself.
Saying “I love you” matters, but love cannot live on those three words alone.
It has to be felt. It has to be lived. It has to show up in the way you treat the person who has trusted you with their heart.
A few years ago, I saw a video of a couple who had been together for more than seven years and still seemed genuinely happy to be around each other.
I remember feeling a little envious.
Not because I wanted their exact relationship, but because I’d never experienced that kind of long-term love for myself.
My first real relationship didn’t happen until I was 28. It was long-distance and lasted almost three years. Eventually, we let each other go because the distance became too much.
There was no dramatic betrayal. No hatred. No need to turn each other into the villain.
It was simply a relationship that had been real, steady and meaningful but couldn’t continue in the way we wanted.
We even stayed friends for a while, until he eventually met someone new.
Then came another relationship.
My first “normal” relationship, at least compared to the distance of the first one. It eventually became toxic, and leaving it didn’t mean I suddenly stopped caring.
I spent four years on my own after that, learning how to rebuild myself.
Even long after the relationship had ended, I struggled with letting go of the love I once had for that person.
I had to teach myself that loving someone doesn’t always mean keeping them in your life.
That was probably one of the hardest things for me to understand because when I love someone, I don’t switch it off easily.
I’ve learned that there is a difference between holding on because you still love someone and holding on because you simply cannot accept that something has ended.
Loving someone can also mean knowing when to let go.
That doesn’t make the love fake.
It doesn’t erase what two people meant to each other.
It simply means that not every love is meant to last in the same form forever.
Maybe that’s what I understand about love now that I didn’t understand when I first wrote about it.
Love is not a guarantee.
Choosing someone every day doesn’t mean the relationship will automatically last forever.
It simply means that while you’re together, you don’t treat their love like something you’re entitled to. You take care of it, pay attention to it and make room for it in your life.
You don’t assume that because someone loves you today, they will always feel loved tomorrow without you putting in the effort to show them.
People change. Life changes. Relationships change.
Love needs attention too. Keeping it alive means learning how to love each other differently as life changes.
I think we sometimes become so comfortable in a relationship that we forget the person beside us is still a person who wants to feel appreciated.
They still want to feel chosen.
They still want to feel wanted.
They still want to know that you notice them.
It doesn’t always require grand gestures. It can be remembering the snack they like, sending a message because you know they’re having a difficult day, planning a date instead of always waiting for the other person to do it, or taking a photo together because you want to remember that particular day.
Little things can carry a lot of meaning.
I’ve always believed that love is found in those details.
Maybe love doesn’t simply disappear.
It can fade quietly when two people stop feeding it. The conversations become less frequent, the effort starts to disappear and the moments that once brought them closer become less important. By the time they realise something has changed, they may already be standing much further apart than they thought.
That is probably why I still believe love is worth choosing. Not because choosing someone means holding on at all costs, but because love needs care while two people are still choosing to be together.
That choice can look like staying and doing the work, having difficult conversations and learning to love someone in a way they can actually feel. Knowing when to let go can be part of loving someone too, especially when staying only causes more hurt.
What matters to me now isn’t simply whether love lasts forever. It’s how we treat each other’s hearts while we have them.
When someone loves you, they are trusting you with a part of themselves. That trust deserves care, honesty and effort.
If you’re lucky enough to have someone who still chooses you, makes time for you, notices the little things and wants to build a life alongside you, don’t become so comfortable that you forget how precious that is.
Keep choosing each other.
Love doesn’t guarantee forever. The person you love still deserves to feel loved while you’re choosing to share your life together.
Love,
Auri Duham🌻
