Tuesday thoughts And What is Love?

Isabelle
43 minutes ago
3 min read

Hi Friends,

February tends to ask the same tired question every year:

What does love look like?

Hearts, flowers, and romantic promises often dominate the conversation. But for many of us in midlife, love has changed shape. It has been tested by long relationships, stretched by sacrifice, and sometimes broken open by endings we never planned. What if this season isn’t about chasing an old version of love—but honoring how our understanding of it has evolved?Here are three ways love often changes as we grow, live, and begin again.

Love as devotion → Love as truth

In long relationships, many of us learned that love meant commitment no matter what. Staying, trying harder, being patient, putting the relationship first. There is beauty in devotion—but there can also be quiet self-abandonment. Over time, love can become less about endurance and more about honesty.Midlife has a way of asking sharper questions: Is this still true for me? Am I shrinking to keep the peace? Love begins to shift from proving loyalty to honoring reality. That truth may lead to deeper connection—or to the painful clarity that something needs to change.This doesn’t mean devotion was wrong. It means it was incomplete. Mature love includes truth—spoken gently, lived bravely, and directed not only outward, but inward as well.

Romantic love → Regulated love

Early love is often fueled by intensity and longing. The highs are high, the lows are dramatic, and everything feels urgent. Many of us mistook emotional volatility for passion and believed that discomfort was simply part of loving deeply.With experience—and sometimes heartbreak—love starts to feel different. Safety matters. Consistency matters. Emotional steadiness becomes more attractive than emotional chaos. Love shifts from adrenaline to grounding.This kind of love doesn’t shout. It shows up. It allows space to breathe, to be ourselves, to rest. For many women, this shift requires unlearning old patterns and trusting that peace is not a lack of love—but a sign of it.

Loving others → Loving life (and self) again

After a breakup, divorce, or major life transition, love often changes direction. For a while, it may not point toward another person at all. Instead, it turns toward life itself, toward friendships, creativity, mornings that feel like your own again.This stage of love can feel unfamiliar, even selfish, especially for women who spent decades caring for others. But it is not withdrawal. It is restoration. Loving yourself, your time, your values, and your becoming is not a replacement for romantic love, it is a foundation.And often, it’s here, when love is no longer chased or negotiated, that it becomes most honest. Not because someone else provides it, but because you finally allow yourself to live it.Love doesn’t disappear as we age, it refines itself. It sheds what was learned in survival mode and grows into something more honest, more spacious, more aligned. Whether love right now looks like truth-telling, emotional steadiness, or a deep appreciation for the life you’re rebuilding, it all counts. There is no single “right” shape of love in this season, only the one that allows you to breathe more fully and live more honestly.If February brings up questions rather than certainty, that’s not a failure. It’s an invitation. Love is still at work, just in a wiser form.