We are wired for connection.

Perhaps your desire for connection feels dormant compared to the stranger sitting beside you, with their arms animated in wild directions, a love struck grin on their face.

We’re led to believe that we aren’t whole on our own.

We’re less than.

Broken.

Defective.

We enter into relationships with expectations.

This person is meant to fulfill us – meet my needs before I even say them.

We treat love like a flame.

In our efforts to build it higher and higher – we end up doing the opposite.

We suffocate it.

“Why do you do it like that?”

“You’re never there for me!”

“It’s like no matter what I do, I can’t make you happy!”

Expectations kill love. It wilts before it ever had a chance to bloom.

Like is different.

To like, is to accept.

To like someone, is to hold no expectations for them.

We don’t love them in a romantic sense.

We just simply like them.

And they like us in return.

As we are.

They like our quirks, our sense of humor, our hobbies.

They like our upbringing and the morals we choose to embody.

They like us for everything we are.

And for everything we’re not.

We’re taught to believe that love is somehow stronger than like.

To like someone is mediocre.

But to love someone is immovable.

Except…

That’s not true.

Like is fluid.

It can move alongside with you as you grow and change.

Love boxes us in.

If we truly want to connect and be loved,

We must begin with like.

Because like is it’s own form of love.