Why Do We Complicate Love?

Love wasn't meant to be so hard

The most significant complication we impose on love is one that almost guarantees we won’t feel it very often: trying to define it. Sure, it’s hard to explore a concept without parameters, but what if it’s not meant to fit into a perfectly intellectualized box?

Similarly, framing love only as something divine or cosmic makes it feel untouchable, like a wisp of smoke that slips through your fingers the moment you reach for it. Too human, and it feels small. Too sacred, and it feels unreachable.

So what do we do with a feeling, sensation, or state of being that is both too vast to define and too subtle to contain?

We become it.

Embodying love is the guarantee that you are never without it, and a promise that love arrives wherever you are, for yourself and others.

This means love is a default, an automatic response to life. It is the means to the end, not the end itself. It’s doing the thing because you love them, not to earn love. It’s an appreciation of the present, not an escape into fantasy. It’s how you treat yourself when you fail and how you react when others let you down.

This newsletter is a meditation on love without the complications. What we could be and do without the habits, beliefs, and survival strategies that make love feel conditional, distant, and rare. This includes comparison and trauma, cultural scripts about romance and success, and the subtle ways we outsource love. Basically, all the things that distract us from what’s already ours.

Instead of “finding” love, how can we stop stepping out of it?

Stylistic note: I’m British, and for many years wrote in standard UK English. Over time, my style shifted toward a Mid-Atlantic voice. My more recent books follow American spelling, and for consistency, my content will also adopt this system from now on. So if you happen to see “center” where you might expect “centre,” rest assured it is an intentional stylistic choice.