I saw her across the coffee shop. Something about her laugh. Something about her eyes. Something that made my heart do that familiar, dangerous thing.
I knew, in that moment, she would hurt me.
I walked toward her anyway.
This is the mystery I want to talk about. Why do we fall for people who will break us? Why does the heart recognize pain and call it love?
I have a theory. We don’t fall in love with strangers. We fall in love with ghosts. The ghost of our father. The ghost of our mother. The ghost of whoever first taught us what love looks like.
If love looked like criticism, we find people who criticize. If love looked like absence, we find people who disappear. If love came with conditions, we find people who make us earn every small kindness.
We think it’s fate. It’s not. It’s pattern.
My friend Rina married a man just like her father. Cold. Distant. Generous with silence. She spent years trying to make him see her. Trying to be good enough. Trying to earn what should have been free.
I asked her once why she chose him. She said, “He felt like home.”
That’s the trap. Familiar feels like right. The nervous system doesn’t know the difference between recognition and compatibility. It just knows: this I understand. This I know how to navigate. This pain has a shape I recognize.
So we choose it. Again and again.
There’s a strange magnetism between certain wounds. The person who fears being left always finds the person who fears being close. The one who gives too much finds the one who takes too much. The anxious one finds the avoidant one. Like puzzle pieces made of broken glass.
These relationships feel intense. Electric. Meant to be. But the electricity is just your nervous system on high alert. The intensity is just trauma recognizing trauma.
I once loved a woman who was never quite there. Present but absent. Warm then cold. Every small kindness felt like a gift. Every moment of attention felt earned.
I thought this was passion. It wasn’t. It was addiction.
The cycle of almost-having creates a drug response in the brain. The relief of finally getting attention releases the same chemicals as any other high. Then withdrawal. Then craving. Then the next small fix.
Healthy love doesn’t work this way. Healthy love is steady. Calm. Reliable. And after years of chaos, steady feels boring. Calm feels suspicious. Reliable feels wrong.
I know people who left good partners because there was no drama. No fights. No making up after breaking down. They said the spark was missing. What they meant was: the familiar pain was missing. And without it, they didn’t know how to feel loved.
We are trying to fix something. That’s what the psychologists say. Every time we choose someone who hurts us the same old way, we are unconsciously trying to rewrite an old story. This time, we think, I will be enough. This time, they will stay. This time, love will not be taken away.
But you cannot heal old wounds by reopening them with new people.
My grandmother married young. A difficult man. She stayed fifty years. My mother married young. A difficult man. She stayed thirty years. I almost followed. Almost chose the same story with a different face.
Patterns pass down like inheritance. Not in blood. In behavior. In what we saw. In what we learned without knowing we were learning.
Breaking the pattern is the hardest thing. Because it means choosing unfamiliar. And unfamiliar feels unsafe. Even when unfamiliar is actually safe.
I met someone last year. Kind. Consistent. Available. She called when she said she would call. She meant what she said. She didn’t make me guess or chase or prove my worth.
I almost ran.
My body kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the coldness. For the disappearance. For the familiar pain that would tell me this was real love.
It never came. And the absence of pain confused me. Where was the intensity? Where was the drama? Where was the ache that I had always called passion?
It was nowhere. Because that ache was never passion. It was fear. It was old wounds being pressed. It was my child-self trying to finally get something that was never coming.
Staying felt like learning a new language. Every day, my nervous system expected chaos. Every day, it received calm. Slowly, slowly, I began to trust. Slowly, the unfamiliar became less foreign.
I’m not saying I’m healed. Old patterns are patient. They wait. Sometimes I still feel the pull toward people who would hurt me. The moth still sees the flame.
But now I recognize it. I see the ghost I’m chasing. I understand that recognition is not destiny. That familiar is not fate. That the ache in my chest when I see a certain kind of person is not love calling. It’s old pain hoping for a different ending.
The ending won’t be different. Not with them. The only different ending comes from choosing different beginnings.
This is hard to hear. I know. We want to believe in meant-to-be. We want the person who makes our heart race to be the right person. We want intensity to mean truth.
But sometimes intensity just means danger. Sometimes the racing heart is just the body remembering old fear. Sometimes the deepest recognition is just two broken mirrors reflecting each other’s cracks.
Real love might feel quieter. Smaller. Less like a storm and more like steady rain. It might not sweep you off your feet. It might just stand beside you. Boring. Reliable. Present.
I’m learning to want that. Learning to trust that. Learning that home doesn’t have to feel like a battlefield.
The coffee shop is empty now. She left hours ago. The woman with the dangerous laugh. The woman my old self would have followed into familiar fire.
I stayed in my seat. Finished my coffee. Walked out alone.
It felt like loss. It also felt like the first step toward something new.
Maybe that’s what healing is. Choosing the unfamiliar ache of growth over the familiar ache of repetition. Walking away from ghosts. Toward something that might actually be real.
It’s terrifying. It’s also the only way forward.
The heart that knows its wounds can finally stop reopening them. Can finally let them close. Can finally learn that love doesn’t have to hurt to be real.
I’m still learning. But I’m learning.
That’s enough for now.