I'd talk to them and zone out. Like I was watching myself, pretending to be me.
They'd say something I could register was funny, but I couldn't really laugh, because I was wondering how they saw me, and whether they could see how I was looking at them. I was hoping they'd just... know.
The last time I felt it happen, I was in Michigan and she was in Texas. We'd been friends for over a year, and only started taking each other seriously as humans after my sister died. That night I was lying in my bed with the most painful grin on my face, painful from all the smiling I'd been doing past ten. We didn't know when we'd see each other, so all we had was the phone. We both had jobs, and lives. And she didn't even know I'd fallen for her.
My face was warm, my heart was light. There was nothing the cold outside could do to chill me out. The small lamp on my desk was on. My phone battery had run down, so I plugged it in and used my airpods, but they kept falling out, so in the end I put her on loudspeaker and lay on my back and just talked.
I had never felt this heard, this seen. And I could tell she wanted me to hear her out, and to see her. She meant every word, every laugh. I knew I couldn't just be friends with her. But I was afraid of what would happen if I let her know.
So I hid the one thing that mattered most, and I called the hiding "playing it cool."
The lie they told us
Here's the lie they told us, back when we were first learning how to want someone.
That wanting is a leak. That the moment you name what you want, you've shown your hand, and showing your hand is how you lose. That the person who cares less has the power, and the person who names it first has given theirs away.
We swallowed it because it felt true. Because when we finally looked at someone and thought please stay, the fear didn't feel like a signal to speak. It felt like proof that we had to stay quiet, that the silence was the only thing keeping us safe from what we wanted.
I wanted to say: "I enjoy talking to you more than I'd like to admit, and I don't know how I'd feel if you were in a relationship with someone else."
What I said was: "I'll talk to you tomorrow, yeah?"
That gap, between the sentence you mean and the sentence you settle for, is where it all gets lost.
What the silence actually does
But here's what actually happens when you hide a want that big.
It doesn't disappear. It curdles.
It converts your attention to the small things that were never the real problem.
The silence shows up like this: you, performing indifference you don't feel, then resenting nothing— and everything— because you have to perform it.
It becomes the exact thing you were trying to avoid: neediness, but in reverse, a neediness so unspoken it has to leak out sideways, through jokes and gaps and memes and questions you can't quite bring yourself to finish. Or dare to start.
The silence doesn't protect you from the outcome you fear. Oh no. It builds it.
Wanting out loud
Wanting to be loved is not the thing that makes you desperate. The chase for it you do in the dark is.
Desperation is what you feel when you want something and you're pretending you don't. It's the gap between the want and the saying of it that turns a person inside out.
When you finally say the thing out loud, you aren't more needy. You're less. You've taken a want that was turning you poisonous, inky and stood it in the open, where it's just... a want.
Here's what I know, having been the version of me who hid and the version of me who didn't.
I found the courage to tell my wife how I felt at the exact moment I was okay with it falling apart.
I'd rather let her know soon, so I could spend more time with her, than bury my intentions and hear, a few weeks later, "Hey, I met someone." Those words would've broken my heart worse. And the ghost of that near-miss would've followed me through every room I ever walked into after.
So the thing that freed me wasn't a trick. It was...acceptance? Yeah. That.
Acceptance.
The terrifying, entirely ordinary decision to stop trying to be the one who cared less, so I could be the one who was actually there, fully present. To see and to be seen.
Not the other overflow
None of this means you should pour your whole chest out to the first person who half-smiles at you. I know we’re all somewhat semi-lovelorn and the world isn’t making being single a fun hobby. But, that's not clarity. That's the other kind of overflow, and it scares people, because it isn't for them. It's for the ache.
This kind of overflow feeds the ache, and the ache will kill you.
Wanting, spoken plainly, is an offer. It doesn't reach and grab. It stands there and lets itself be seen: this is me, this is what I feel, you're free to do with it what you will.
A gift. Given. A present. This moment. Me. You. Here.
You are not being too much when you say what you want. You are being legible, and legibility is a gift you give someone you care about. It says: I trust you enough to let you see me, even if what you see is that I'm scared.
That's not weak. That's the bravest version of you there is.
Clear will always be kind. But it doesn’t promise to be pain free.
No system
I don't have a system for this. I'm not going to give you a script for the third date or a formula for how many days to wait before you text.
What I know is smaller, and it's more true.
It was true the morning I told my wife I wanted to date with the intentions of marriage, and it was true this morning when I kissed her hand for no reason.
It's this: you are worth loving, and you are worth being loved.
What you are looking for is available, if you are willing to risk not getting it — if that means you remain true to your heart, mind, and spirit.
When you finally accept that you want both intimacy and privacy, when you finally accept that you have deal-breakers and strong opinions and things you won't compromise on, something settles. You stop auditioning. You stop watching yourself from the ceiling of the room, hoping they'll just... know.
You start being there, which is the only place love can actually find you.
There's a version of that old line I keep coming back to. Not that the person who cares less has the power. The reverse, the one that's actually true:
The person who can say what they want, and survive it landing, is the one who's free.
Not free from the wanting. Free inside of the wanting.
That's a person worth becoming, if you ask me. And it starts with one uncertain sentence you say out loud, knowing it might fall apart. You know the one. It’s at the tip of your tongue right now and your ears get warm just thinking of it.
Say it anyway. If it falls, let it. Better to hear the truth soon and go spend your heart somewhere it's wanted, than to hide it and hear, weeks later, "Hey, I met someone."
Yours truly,
Not a relationship expert.