Akio Tsukino

21/02/2026

I Love You, Despite

Loving, specifically in a monogamous romantic sense, is not something that can be explained very easily.

Loving someone is not just a set of actions. It is not just a set of emotions associated with another. It is a messy interconnection between everything that makes a person, human.

To love someone, is a wholly different thing depending on who you ask. It is an ever changing, ever evolving concept that we associate with another person. A person who is experiencing a different, but just as complex narrative of love to your own.

But overcomplication will not help us have a tangible meaningful conversation about love. I have not set out to rewrite pomegranate poetry.

There are many foils in both the modern and historical pursuit of a positive long-term romantic relationship. I will not claim to understand, nor have answers to any of them. But I would like to share my experiences with one particular foil.

To be loved is to be understood.

When considering a relationship, both intentionally and intuitively, there are many "fundamentals" that we tend to adherer to. Once again, these fundamentals are different depending on the person and the various factors defining them. But for many, especially in recent times, understanding has become one of the most important.

And not just any vague sense of understanding either. We seek to find someone that understands us as a person.

Our actions, our interests, our identities. These are things that we want carefully, lovingly, dissected. To have the things that we put so much effort and time curating and building ourselves be reflected back to us in a way that validates all that went into it in the first place.

How could they love you if they don't even know the real YOU?

There is an argument here that delves into the philosophical and social concept of identity itself. Hyper-individualistic impulses crafted by the hellish capitalistic landscape versus a community based one where identity is less of a way to market yourself. It definitely warrants being talked about and discussed. I won't be doing that here. Instead, lets talk about identity as something inherently precious to us.

The things you like, the ways in which you present yourself, the niches you participate in may be influenced by tons of external factors. But that doesn't take away from the fact that we inherently like and relate to certain things. These are extremely strong, individual, human connections each of us has that determine who we are, both in the present and in the future. Biased or not, they shape our interactions with everything else in the world. It is important to us. Significant to us.

Love is important to us, significant to us. To be loved is to be understood.

To be loved, is to have someone examine everything important to us, and have it reflected back to us as we see it. But is that really the purpose of love? Is the purpose of love really just validating something that inherently only belong to us? How can someone else, even through the force of love, understand something that is meant to be entirely unique to ones self?

To be clear, I do not mean that your partner should not have similar interests to you. Two people can have the same interests, but their personal connections, associations, and interpretations of said interests rarely align. And when that expectation is interpolated to every interest/aspect that makes up your whole identity, it starts becoming an issue.

If we are to believe that our identity makes up a unique fingerprint of who we are, then we must accept that its only onto us to care for it. Dialogues with yourself cannot be replicated with your partner. Your identity was built for yourself. Part of that identity is the shared relationship between you and your partner. That does not mean all of it is.

All of this to say; enjoy the things that make you, YOU, as you always have. And enjoy the new and ever evolving part of you that bloomed when you fell in love, with your lover. Leave space for your identity to evolve and change shape, without the expectation of constant validation. The link of understanding between you and your partner will not stay the same length as you both evolve. Change is personal. Not everyone goes through change together. And that is okay. Love, if eternal, cannot hold onto the constant expectation of understanding.

To be loved is not just to be understood. To be loved is to be, despite.