Some people spend their lives wondering why they feel safer with one kind of love than another. Why certain people seem to fill a silence they didn’t realize they were carrying until someone finally spoke into it. Now, it’s not about preference, not about attraction– just about survival. About how love first arrived in their life, whether it felt like a gift or a test.
A child learns what love means by how it’s given, and just as often, how it’s withheld. If a mother’s love feels conditional–soft one moment, “tough” the next, or so distant it might as well be imagined– it teaches a child something dangerous: love is unpredictable, in the bad way. Love might hurt you, or leave if you’re not careful. Love might stay, but only if you work hard enough to earn it.
But then, there’s someone else. A father, an uncle, a grandfather, or even just a family friend. Someone who doesn’t ask you to prove your worth with every breath you take. Someone whose love shows up the same way every time, steady, quiet, but unshakeable. That’s the kind of love that lingers.
Over time, you start seeking that steadiness without realizing it. You gravitate towards the people who feel like an anchor in a “storm”. Who doesn’t ask for perfection but only presence. It’s not about rejecting others, not about thinking one type of love is better than another– it’s about what your heart learned to trust when trust was hard to come by.
And still, there’s an ache in it. Because no matter how many steady hands you hold, no matter how many voices remind you you’re worthy, there’s still a part of you searching for something you’ll never get back. It’s not them you miss, it’s the child you were, waiting for love to feel easy and knowing how to stop blaming themselves when it didn’t.
The truth is, you’re not chasing love. You’re chasing proof–proof that you’re loveable. Proof that the way someone else failed to show up for you wasn’t your fault, proof you were never too sensitive, or too much to handle. Proof that you just felt hard, proof that there was just more to be loved. You think if you find the right person, they’ll fix pieces of you that never learned how to feel whole. But that’s not how it works.
Because the hardest lesson of all, validation won’t fix the cracks in your foundation. It won’t rewrite your childhood, and it certainly won’t undo the way someone else failed to show up for you. But it can hold a mirror up to you. It can ask you to see yourself the way they do–not through the lens of what you’ve lost, but the lens of what you survived.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not about them. It’s not about him, or her, or anyone else. It’s about you. It’s about walking into the parts of yourself that feel too raw to touch and learning to sit with them, to hold them and I see you. I love you, and you don’t have to do anything to deserve it.
Author’s Note:
A lot of the time, validation isn’t sought out for just for attention. It’s about survival, wanting proof that you can be seen in a light that’s unwavering. There’s a root for everything: so let me try to explain this one. This is dedicated for every man, woman or child who feels unseen or unheard. I see you. I hear you, and you don’t have to do anything to earn it.
Dorabell Doll | 14 | Sunrise, FL | @officialdorabelldoll on Instagram
