My friend Rana told his wife he loved her every day. Every morning before work, every night before sleep. “I love you,” he would say, and she would say it back, and they would both feel reassured.
Then she left him.
He called me at 2 AM, unable to breathe. “I loved her so much,” he kept saying. “How could she leave when I loved her so much?”
I listened to him for hours. And somewhere in those hours, I began to understand something. What Rana called love was not love. It was something else. Something that looked like love, sounded like love, but was not love at all.
It was fear.
When Rana said “I love you,” what he meant was “please don’t leave me.” When he held her, he was holding onto his own sense of security. When he gave her gifts, he was purchasing insurance against abandonment. His love was a contract: I will give you affection, and in return, you will never go.
This is not love. This is attachment. And most of us cannot tell the difference.
I have thought about this for years. About what we mean when we say those three words. About what we are actually asking for when we declare our love.
True love, I think, wants the other person to be happy. That is all. It does not add conditions. It does not say: I want you to be happy, as long as your happiness includes me. It does not say: I want you to be happy, but only if you stay. It simply wants happiness for the beloved, wherever that happiness is found.
This is almost impossible for humans to feel.
We are built for attachment. We are wired to bond, to cling, to need. From infancy, we learn that love means presence. Mother’s love means mother is there. When mother leaves, we cry. We learn early that love and presence are the same thing. Love means staying. Absence means love has failed.
We carry this equation into adulthood. When our partner is with us, we feel loved. When they are away, we feel anxious. When they want space, we feel rejected. We measure love by proximity, by availability, by the constant reassurance of presence.
But this is not love. This is need wearing love’s clothing.
I knew a woman who loved a man who did not love her back. For years, she waited. She hoped. She rearranged her life around the possibility that he might someday choose her. Her friends told her to move on. She could not. She called it love.
But what she felt was attachment to an idea. She was not loving him—she did not even know him fully. She was loving the fantasy of being chosen by him. She was loving the future she had imagined, not the person who existed. Her “love” was entirely about her own needs. It had nothing to do with his happiness.
True love would have said: I want you to be happy, even if that happiness is with someone else. True love would have released him. True love does not cling to people who do not want to be held.
The hardest question I have ever asked myself is this: do I love the people I say I love, or do I need them?
When I examine my feelings honestly, the answer is uncomfortable. Much of what I call love is actually dependence. I love my wife—but I also cannot imagine my life without her. I love my children—but I also need them to need me. I love my friends—but I also fear being alone.
How much of my love is gift, and how much is transaction? How much is about their happiness, and how much is about my security?
I do not think pure love is possible for most of us. We are too human, too afraid, too hungry for connection. But I think we can become aware of the difference. We can notice when our “love” is actually fear. We can catch ourselves demanding reassurance, clinging too tightly, making our peace dependent on another person’s presence.
The test is simple. Can you say: I love you, even if you leave?
Not: I love you, so please don’t leave. Not: I will love you as long as you stay. But: I love you, and if leaving is what you need, I will survive. I will be sad. I will grieve. But I will not collapse. My identity does not depend on your presence. My love for you does not require your love for me.
This is terrifying. This is also freedom.
Rana could not say this. His love was conditional on staying. When his wife left, he did not just lose her—he lost himself. He had built his entire identity around being her husband. Without her, he did not know who he was.
This is the danger of attachment disguised as love. We merge with the other person. We erase the boundary between self and beloved. We become half a person, requiring another half to be whole. And when that other half leaves, we experience it as death.
True love maintains separateness. It says: I am whole. You are whole. We choose to be together, but we do not need to be together. Our togetherness is gift, not requirement. Our love is free, not desperate.
I am trying to love this way. It is the hardest thing I have ever attempted.
Every day, I catch myself clinging. Every day, I notice the fear underneath my affection. Do you still love me? Will you stay? Please don’t leave. These questions live in my chest constantly. They are not love. They are hunger.
But sometimes—rarely, briefly—I touch something else. A moment when I look at my wife and simply want her to be happy. Not happy with me. Just happy. A moment when I hold my child and feel only gratitude for their existence, not anxiety about their future distance. A moment when love is pure giving, expecting nothing, needing nothing back.
These moments do not last. The fear returns. The attachment reasserts itself. But the moments are real. They show me what is possible.
Perhaps that is all we can hope for. Not to eliminate attachment—we are too human for that—but to know the difference. To recognize when we are loving and when we are needing. To catch ourselves in the act of clinging and, sometimes, to let go.
Rana is slowly recovering. He is learning to be a whole person again, not half of a couple. He is discovering that he can survive what he thought would kill him. Maybe next time—if there is a next time—his love will be different. Less desperate. More free.
I hope so. For him and for all of us.
Because the love that clings is a prison for two people.
And the love that releases is the only love that is real.