Measured by Love
There’s a raw honesty to being chosen. When someone looks at you, really looks at you, it can feel like they’ve soothed that place inside us that’s been aching. And we crave that. We’ve been taught to believe that being seen by another person means we’re lovable, desirable, and worthy. But the absence or presence of love in your life shouldn’t determine your worth.
Yet so many of us can’t help it, because most of us have felt it. We long for validation, even though we know deep down it’s fragile ground to stand on - a truth that’s simple to write, but hard to live. And that’s why it can feel instinctive for us to take someone’s rejection as proof that something is wrong with us, or their attention as proof that we finally matter.
That instinct is painful, but it’s also human. We are wired for connection, and connection feels like validation. But when we don’t get it, it feels like a verdict - “they didn’t pick me” becomes “I’m not enough” in our heads, and it’s easy to forget that those conclusions are stories our nervous system makes to keep us safe. But there are quieter pressures too... Romance culture sells us belonging as a trophy: if the right person chooses you, you’ve “made it”, “your partner is your other half”.
Seeing someone as your ‘other half’ sounds poetic, but it can quietly hand away our agency. It instills the belief that we’re incomplete and that only another person can fix that, but that sets a relationship up as a necessity rather than a choice. That dynamic can seed an endless hunt for validation, seed dependence, and potentially resentment too. But when we date from wholeness, when us and our partner as ‘two wholes’ - two people who have chosen to come together freely. Two people choosing partnership over survival, connection over rescue, and that changes everything.
But telling someone to “just love yourself” can sound like gaslighting when they’re already raw and exhausted. Self-love gets billed as the cure-all, but that’s only half the truth. And I won’t lie to you... learning how to love yourself doesn’t magically make the desire for love and validation disappear. That longing is human, and it will always be there. But self-love does help you become more discerning. It teaches you who actually deserves your time and effort, and who only drains it.
This isn’t a failure, it’s a survival pattern. Children learn what makes them safe by watching who gives them care and who ignores them. And as adults, we still carry those belief systems. That’s why rejection can feel catastrophic: because somewhere in our history, not being chosen once meant not being safe. But love is not a measuring tape. And today, those wounds get supercharged by social media. A partner’s attention isn’t just private anymore - it’s public confirmation. If the person who chooses you is someone others clearly want, their love feels like double validation: you’re not just seen, you’re approved by the world. That’s not vanity, it’s a shortcut our brains use to measure value and safety.
But here’s the cost: when we let someone else’s choice stand in for our worth, we hand them the scale we should never have let go of in the first place. It makes us fragile to absence, jealous of attention, and willing to over-give until it hurts. We people-please, we dim our light, we turn into a chameleon - all to keep being “chosen”.
It’s powerful, yes. It can colour your days, remind you that you’re seen, help heal old wounds, and even teach you how to be kinder to yourself. But it can’t create worth out of thin air. It can’t reliably patch the places in you that need steady healing work. When we let love be the barometer for our value, we give people the power to tells us whether we matter. That’s a heavy burden for anyone to carry and a precarious way to exist.
Love is a gift, not the foundation of your identity. People will come and go, but your value doesn’t. You were worthy before anyone loved you, and you’ll remain worthy long after. You shouldn’t have to trade your sense of worth for temporary attention, you deserve someone who lives and breathes the same emotional language as you.
