How I Built The Healthy Relationship I Longed For

On Fear, Love, And Facing Myself

I was in an 8:00am undergraduate psychology class, learning about the Triangular Theory of Love. I was 20 years old and reeling from a heart break that left me re-evaluating everything I thought I knew about love (what can I say, I was young and angsty).

The Triangular Theory of Love suggests that love is built on three anchors: commitment (your decision to stick with a person and be committed to them), intimacy (closeness, emotional connection), and passion (spark, romance, sex).

And as I sat in class, something hit me me, hard. I didn't believe, at that exact moment, in all three prongs of the triangle. Passion? Whatever. What use was passion if someone wasn't committed to you? Intimacy? Can be faked. Can be an illusion.

Commitment. That was all I could really see, all I could aim for. I would know when someone cared about me (for real) when their actions told me that they did. I vowed right there (because yes, I am a drama queen) to stop searching for passion and intimacy and to start focusing solely on committed action in my future relationships.

I would know I was in love again when someone treated me like they loved me. End of story. Or at least, that's what I told myself.

FYI, I voiced a version of this epiphany to the class, and my professor looked mildly concerned and suggested that maybe I was misunderstanding the theory just a bit. This feedback did not sway me.

I met my husband a few years later. I was, by then a graduate student in psychology, and although I'd grown more secure with myself and certainly overcome that particular heartbreak, I was still struggling to integrate the three prongs of the triangle.

I had accepted (reluctantly) that it didn't work to just cut off emotion. I wouldn't actually want to be with someone if there wasn't attraction, emotional connection, all that juice that makes a relationship feel special and alive. But I was scared (terrified) to weight those qualities too heavily, because I'd been burned before by love that felt deep and intense but lacked consistency and commitment. I didn't want to fall in love with someone who would say all the right things but fail to actually show up.

I wanted love, really badly. But I didn't want it just to feel it, a swoon that would pass. I wanted a shared life. I wanted a partner, in the truest sense of the word.

Now, many many moons later, I have the exact relationship that I was too scared to let myself even desire. A relationship full of romance and intimacy that is fortified by—not in competition with—rock solid commitment.

I'm reflecting today on what had to happen within me for that relationship to gradually come into being. Get ready—this one is a vulnerable dive into what it's really like to face your own heartache and habits head on.