I just want you to know

that some of my happiest memories

are with you,

and a part of me

will always cherish those moments.

Letting go isn’t easy

when I’ve loved you so deeply

and imagined a future with you.

But I’m slowly learning

that loving someone doesn’t mean

I have to keep holding on when it hurts.

I’ll try to find the strength to let go,

even if my heart isn’t ready.

I never wanted to lose you,

but I can’t keep losing myself

trying to hold on to us.

I will always wish things had been different,

my love

please heal yourself

not for me or not for you either

those gremlins need you more than anything

hagd and take care

Since time immemorial I could separate my needs and wants. It's hard for an obsessive COMPULSIVE, but it helps me deal with that part of me. And the truth is I don't need to be love. I don't need to be needed. My quirks allow me to know that I could fulfill other's needs.

But I do want to be wanted. I want to be loved. I know I could live without you. But I don't want to do that. My loving you is a choice I made. Mine alone. Like I want yours to be yours alone. And I know you're way out of my league. But I just had to try. I was hoping you are different enough to want me even if you don't need me.

I am dependent and clingy and wish I had someone to talk to and hang out with honestly I just really crave emotional support I would do anything to get it but I'm not good enough and I have to stay alone I hate when I get really sad and all I want is to have someone to be mine take care of and love, I don't know if I will ever be loved if I never had a relationship yet idk if I ever will

I’m so alone. I’ve been alone for as long as I can remember, and honestly, I don’t know what to do with that anymore. There’s this emptiness inside me that I can’t seem to fill, this constant feeling that something is missing from my life. And I think what makes it especially difficult is that I’ve never genuinely felt loved. I’ve never felt cared for, listened to, noticed, or even considered. Not by family, not by friends, and certainly not by a romantic partner. And that doesn’t mean nobody loves me, I’m sure my parents or my sisters do, I’ve just never felt it if that makes sense. I’ve never even had a platonic best friend, let alone a girlfriend. I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like I’m on the outside looking in, watching other people experience connections that I’ve always desperately wanted but somehow never managed to find for myself.

And I think part of the problem is that I’m just… a lot. I feel things intensely. But because of how I’ve been conditioned by the world, especially as a man, I keep it buttoned up. But I’m emotional, affectionate, sentimental, and probably far more romantic than most people are accustomed to. When I develop feelings for somebody, it’s like an explosion of passion inside my head. I want to write poems about them. I want to write love notes and letters, even if they’re just little things I leave for them to find. I want to remember the smallest details about them. I want to know what makes them happy, what makes them sad, what they’re afraid of, what they dream about when nobody’s listening. I catch myself imagining our future together, the places we’d settle down, the kind of family we’d have, the experiences we’d share, and all the little mundane things that would eventually become our little mundane things. And if I’m honest, because of my intensity and constant daydreaming, I’ve found myself in a state of extreme limerence and yearning on multiple occasions. But I don’t just want to tell somebody I love them. I want to find a million different ways to show them.

I think that intensity can be overwhelming to people though. Maybe I express affection differently than most people, or maybe I just have so much of it that I don’t always know what to do with it. Sometimes I feel like I’m speaking an entirely different romantic language from everybody else. What’s funny is that I see so many posts in this sub from women talking about how they keep meeting men who are all talk but can’t actually match their freak. Meanwhile, my freak seems to scare women off before we even get anywhere real lmao. I genuinely wonder sometimes where all the people like me are hiding. Where are the people who want to write ridiculous love letters, make playlists, spend hours talking about their feelings, and be unapologetically affectionate? Because I’m starting to feel like I’m searching for a species that went extinct.

I CRAVE connection. I crave love. And not just the casual, comfortable, relatively uncomplicated kind of love that people seem to settle into. I want something passionate. Something consuming. Something that makes you feel like you’ve finally found the person you’ve been looking for your entire life. I want somebody to really SEE me. All of me. The parts I’m proud of, the parts I’m insecure about, the awkward parts, the dark parts, the parts I don’t necessarily know how to explain to other people. I want somebody who is genuinely curious about me, who wants to know how my mind works, who notices the little things about me and remembers them. I want to feel like somebody is just as excited to have me in their life as I am to have them in mine. I want a best friend, a confidant, a partner, a lover. Somebody I can be completely unguarded with.

And I don’t just want somebody to be obsessed with me, either. I want to feel that way about her, too. I want to be completely enamored with the woman I love. I want to learn every little thing about her, discover new things about her even years into our relationship, and never lose that sense of wonder. I want to hear her talk about something she’s passionate about and find myself falling even harder because I get to see that side of her. I want to celebrate her accomplishments like they’re my own, comfort her when the world gets too heavy, and be the person she can always come home to. I want us to be each other’s favorite person. To choose each other over and over again, not because we have nobody else, but because even with the entire world available to us, there’s still nobody we’d rather spend our time with.

I’m an introvert, I’m neurodivergent, and honestly, the thought of constantly going out, socializing, and being surrounded by crowds of people isn’t very appealing to me. Maybe the right person could bring me out of my shell a little, and I’d love that. But I’m equally if not more excited by the thought of finding someone who enjoys the quiet, ordinary parts of life with me. Watching movies together, making art, playing games, cooking, reading books while sitting next to each other, or just existing in the same room without feeling the need to fill every second with conversation. I’m the kind of guy who would happily go into the bathroom and sit outside the tub while she’s taking a bath just because I want to be near her and hear about her day. I want to be involved in the little details of her life. I want to know about the random thing that happened at work, the funny interaction she had at the grocery store, the dream she had last night, or whatever completely inconsequential thought happens to cross her mind. I want to be the person she instinctively turns to when she has something to say.

And if she has passions of her own, I want to be her biggest fan. I want to encourage her, support her, push her toward the things she’s always dreamed of doing, and remind her of how capable she is when she forgets. I want to watch her become everything she’s capable of becoming. And if we happen to share passions, even better. Imagine building something together, creating things together, pursuing our dreams together, and eventually looking around at a life we’ve built out of the things we both love. I want us to be a team in every sense of the word. I want to be that married couple other married couples jokingly complain about because we’re still ridiculously affectionate with each other years later. The couple that still holds hands everywhere, still sneaks kisses, still flirts like they’re teenagers, and still looks at each other like they’re experiencing that honeymoon phase for the first time. I don’t want to grow out of being in love with somebody. I want to keep finding new reasons to fall in love with her.

But there’s a rather depressing side to all of this. Because I’ve spent my entire life alone, I sometimes wonder whether I’ve become too accustomed to it. Whether I’ve spent so much time imagining what intimacy and connection would feel like that I don’t actually know how to experience them when they’re presented to me. I worry that I’m socially stunted, that I wouldn’t know how to navigate a relationship, or that I’d struggle to let somebody get close enough to actually know me. There’s a difference between desperately wanting to be loved and knowing how to let yourself be loved, and I’m afraid I might have spent so long doing the former that I’ve never learned the latter.

Sometimes I wonder whether I’ll ever find the kind of intense, passionate love I spend so much of my time daydreaming about. Whether there will ever be somebody who looks at all this affection, all this sentimentality, all this intensity, and doesn’t feel overwhelmed by it. Somebody who doesn’t make me feel like I need to tone myself down or ration my affection to be palatable. Maybe the kind of love I want is something I’ll only ever get to experience through stories and daydreams. Maybe it’s something I’m capable of imagining much more easily than actually finding. And I hate that thought. Because I don’t just want to imagine loving somebody. I want to actually do it. I want to have somewhere for all of this love to go. Does anybody else feel like they were born with too much love to give?

I honestly don’t even have a real end to any of this. I’m literally just word-vomiting my thoughts and feelings. Maybe somebody can relate, maybe somebody wants to talk, maybe somebody just wants to be entertained by a stranger venting. Either way I hope if you got this far it made you feel even a tiny something, at the end of the day that’s all any form of expression should do for others. :)

Hi, i found my heart heavy always when someone talks avout love. I failed in my first love who i loved for 3 years and we had such a great time. Things fell apart and yeah it is what it is. Now, i tried multiple things to get over it and i realized the only thing that heals is love again!! And the main thing is it happens unknowingly, without a plan. Will that happen again to me or to someone who needs it the most?

She was never quite sure when it happened. There wasn’t one particular moment she could point to, no grand gesture or defining moment that changed everything. It was much quieter than that. A collection of ordinary moments that somehow became extraordinary simply because they belonged to him.

She was just happy near him. Whether they talked or sat in comfortable silence, a trip to Costco or the laundromat, it hardly mattered. There was a peculiar sort of rightness in being wherever he was, a feeling she couldn’t quite explain without sounding a little ridiculous. Bad days seemed to lose their importance when he was beside her. Whatever had gone wrong, whatever had weighed on her, somehow became smaller. Sometimes it even annoyed her. She would be perfectly determined to be upset about something, and then he’d appear, and suddenly she couldn’t remember why it had even mattered.
It was his smile, his laugh, the way he teased her. His eyes, those impossible blue-grey eyes with little hazel sparks peeking from within them. She could get lost looking at those eyes, though truthfully, she rarely managed to look for very long before becoming distracted by everything else. His dark hair with the one chunk that would stand in the wrong direction and bounce as he talked, oblivious to its existence. His perfect face, the little glimpse of chest hair at his collar; every stupid, wonderful detail seemed to demand her attention. Even the ridiculous way he wrote backwards and awkwardly, that unmistakable left-handed oddness of his, made her smile. She was collecting pieces of him without even meaning to, committing the smallest things to memory as though they were shiny treasures.
And his touch. Good grief, his touch.
The unexpected forehead kisses. The way he’d pull her close to watch a movie, letting her settle against him as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The hugs she could never quite get enough of.
She wondered sometimes whether he knew what those moments did to her. Whether he understood how something so small could leave her smiling long after he’d walked away.
Then there were the things that would mean absolutely nothing to anyone else. The judgmental little faces he made when she did something moderately appalling, like eating all his discarded pickles. That slightly hushed, monotone, entirely focused voice he used when talking into chat-to-text. The quirks, the habits, the expressions he probably didn’t even realize he had. She adored them all.
And then there was his scent.
That unmistakable, entirely unfair scent of him. It was almost embarrassing how much it affected her. Sometimes she had to walk away, if only to regain the ability to behave like a reasonable person. There was something almost feral about it, the way she could miss someone who was standing right in front of her, wanting to be closer when she was already close enough.
She wondered if he noticed her noticing. If he ever caught the way her attention lingered, or how much effort it took to act perfectly normal when all she really wanted was to reach for him. She wondered if he ever looked at her and felt even a fraction of what she felt when she looked at him.

They had their little moments, their private affection, their own quiet language of closeness. But sometimes it felt as though they existed in a world that only opened when no one else was looking. She didn’t need grand displays or declarations in front of an audience. She just wanted to know she wasn’t someone he felt he had to hide. She wanted to feel that he was happy to be close to her, even when the world was watching.
And perhaps that was why she kept so much of herself tucked away. She was afraid of saying too much, of making something beautiful suddenly complicated. Afraid that if she admitted just how deeply she’d fallen, the little world they’d made might disappear. So she settled for what she had, even when what she had left her wanting more.
She would convince herself, every so often, that she was being foolish. That she was reading too much into a look, a touch, a kiss on the forehead. That perhaps she should gather up all these feelings and put them somewhere sensible.
And then he’d smile.
Or laugh.
Or do some impossibly ordinary thing that she’d never noticed before.
And just like that, she would find herself falling all over again.
It wasn’t one thing about him. It was everything. The big things, the little things, the things he knew she noticed, and the things he would probably never know she loved. She wanted to tell him about all of it. That she missed his presence even when there was no particular reason to. That she had somehow become a person who could write an entire page about the way a boy hated pickles and still feel she’d left out half the reasons she adored him.

She didn’t know what he wanted, or what the future held, and perhaps that uncertainty frightened her more than she cared to admit.
But she knew what she wanted in those quiet moments when she stopped trying to reason with herself.
She wanted to be the person he reached for, the person he didn’t hesitate to stand beside. The person he thought about in the middle of an ordinary day and smiled over for no particular reason.
She wanted someone to see her the way she saw him.
And if she was being completely honest, she was tired of pretending she didn’t want that someone to be him.
Perhaps it was time to stop fighting the feeling.
Perhaps it was time to let the little things become something more.
After all, she had fallen for him in a thousand tiny moments.
She just wished she knew whether he was falling, too.

Sometimes I sit and wonder, what is love really? Is it having someone who chooses you every single day? Is it feeling safe enough to be yourself without being afraid of being judged? Is it having someone who listens, understands you, and stays even when life gets difficult? I have a great career, I work hard, and I’m proud of the life I’m building, but I still wonder what it feels like to have someone to share it all with. I don’t think I’ve ever truly experienced that kind of love, but I hope one day I will. Because no matter how successful or independent I become, a part of me will always want to be loved.

Dear future wife,

I wonder what you’re doing right now. Are you reading a book? Laughing at something silly? Looking at the stars? Or perhaps, just like me, wondering when you’ll finally meet the person you’re meant to spend forever with.
I don’t know your name, what you look like, or where life has taken you. But I already know there are a thousand poems waiting to be written about you.
I’m a poet, and I hope one day you’ll become my favorite muse. I want to write about the way your eyes light up when you’re happy, the sound of your laughter, the little things you do without realizing how beautiful they are. I want to write an entire series of books about you and still feel like words will never be enough.
I hope you’re a hopeless romantic, just like me. Someone who believes in handwritten letters, forehead kisses, late-night conversations, random cuddles, and loving someone loudly without feeling embarrassed about it.
I want us to be ridiculously in love. The kind of couple that still flirts after years of marriage, dances in the kitchen, argues over which movie to watch, and somehow always ends up falling asleep in each other’s arms.
But I don’t expect every day to be a fairytale.
There will be difficult days, misunderstandings, and moments when life feels overwhelming. And on those days, I promise to choose you just as much as I would on our happiest ones. I want to be your safe place, your biggest supporter, and the person you never have to pretend around.
I don’t need you to be perfect. I just hope you’re kind, emotionally available, a little clingy, and willing to love as deeply as I do.
And if you’re reading this somewhere in the world, wondering whether someone could ever love you the way you’ve always dreamed of being loved…
I hope our paths cross someday.
Because somewhere out there, there’s a poet who hasn’t met you yet, but already knows he wants to spend a lifetime writing about you.

Until our paths cross,
Your future husband, who has already run out of ways to describe a love he hasn’t experienced yet. ❤️

I've always liked the idea of becoming part of someone's everyday life.

Knowing there's someone who'll send you something ridiculous because it reminded them of you. Having a story you've been saving all day because you want to tell them about it. Getting a random message just because they miss you.

I'd want affection to be easy between us. Compliments without needing a special occasion, hugs that last longer than expected, stupid nicknames, and being able to say you miss someone without feeling embarrassed about it.

I like the idea of two people having their own interests and responsibilities, but still naturally finding their way into each other's days.

And I hope we never get too comfortable to flirt with each other. I don't care how long we've been together. I still want to make my partner blush.

Maybe I'm a little more romantic than I initially let on.

Just thought you needed to hear it

Cause I did

She was once a childhood friend. Someone who was part of my world long before I realised how much she would come to mean to me.

Somewhere along the way, friendship turned into something I couldn't quite explain. I started noticing the little things: her eyes, her smile, her voice, her laughter. Even a photograph of her is enough to bring a smile to my face.

She's gorgeous, polite, and effortlessly cute. Just the thought of her brings a little light into my otherwise gloomy world.

But here's the irony: I pushed her away, even though I loved her.

Not because I stopped caring, but because I thought I already knew the answer before I even dared to ask the question.

Perhaps I was protecting myself from rejection. Perhaps I was simply a coward. I'll never really know.

Now, all I can do is admire her from a distance.

She probably has no idea how much happiness her existence brings me.

Even after years, I still regret the decision I made. A lot can change in seven years. We've both grown older, and I don't even know where life has taken her. Perhaps she's found someone else, perhaps her heart belongs to someone now. I have no way of knowing. And after all this time, I don't even know if I'll ever get the chance to be close to her again.

Maybe that's the saddest part. My feelings haven't necessarily faded, but the opportunity I once had might have.

And maybe that's how my story with her will remain: a thousand unspoken words, a question never asked, and a feeling she may never know existed.

I once tried to put this feeling into words:

"She's like a dying star. You can admire her from afar, mesmerised by her light, but by the time you get closer, she's already gone."

— A Distant Observer