Five people. Five different answers. One question: What does “I love you” really mean?

Lately I’ve been wondering what does ‘I love you’ mean. And although I didn’t mention it to Maya from the start, this has a lot to do with us. As much grief as I’ve been through, I wanted to get an idea to where her and I may be headed and feeling love again has been sort of contentious to me lately.

So, I asked her and a few others the question: What it means to them.

Their answers were thoughtful, honest, and surprisingly different. Some described love as trust. Others described peace, emotional connection, or quiet presence.

What stood out most was that nobody talked about perfection. Instead, they talked about consistency, safety, kindness, and the small moments that make people feel less alone.

What does “I love you” mean to you?

Nadiia

“Unconditional trust. For me it’s very important.”

Reflection

Nadiia’s answer may have been the shortest, but it carried enormous weight.

Trust is often the foundation beneath every form of love. It’s trusting someone with your fears, vulnerabilities, health struggles, insecurities, and truth. And it’s believing they won’t use your difficult moments against you.

Without trust, even affection can feel unstable.

With trust, love feels safer.

Maya

“Love to me means feeling at home with someone. Not perfection, not butterflies every second, just that calm feeling where you can exhale and know you’re accepted exactly as you are.

It’s choosing each other in the little ways every day. Checking in after hard appointments, remembering random details, making each other laugh when life gets heavy, and still wanting to stay close even after the exciting newness settles down.

I think real love is consistency. It’s effort without being asked. It’s honesty, patience, reassurance, and knowing someone’s heart well enough to protect it.

Love should feel safe, warm, and genuine. Like you don’t have to perform to be worthy of it.

And honestly, I think love is when someone becomes part of your everyday thoughts without trying. You see something funny, beautiful, or difficult and they’re the first person you want to tell.”

Reflection

Maya described love less as intensity and more as emotional safety.

Her answer centered on consistency, reassurance, and everyday effort rather than grand gestures.

The phrase “feeling at home with someone” stood out. That’s the kind of love I want. But for many people, love is often portrayed as excitement or unpredictability. The real love I want is calmer than that. It feels like acceptance. Like being able to exhale.

Her response to love living in small moments touched me. It’s something I’ve learned over the past few years. Like checking in. Remembering details. Trying without being asked. Protecting someone’s heart. Not everyone creates peace in another person’s life. But those that do are remembered and cherished.

Agnes

“For me, love is the experience of oneness. It’s the feeling that someone is no longer entirely separate from you but has become part of your inner world. In that sense, loving someone means seeing them as an extension of yourself — their joy matters to you, their pain affects you, and their wellbeing feels personally significant.

That’s why love isn’t exclusive to romance. It can be felt toward family, friends, pets, or even humanity as a whole. The object changes, the intensity changes, but the underlying experience remains the same: inclusion rather than separation.

I also see love as something deeper than the emotional high people often associate with it. Those intense feelings can come and go. Love itself doesn’t have to be constantly felt in a dramatic way. You don’t spend every moment aware of your hand or your heartbeat, yet they’re still part of you. In the same way, love can exist quietly in the background of your life. And you often recognize its depth most clearly when what you love is no longer there.”

Reflection

Agnes approached the question from a psychological and philosophical perspective.

Her description of love as “the experience of oneness” reframes love as something deeper than temporary emotion. She also challenges the idea that love must constantly feel dramatic.

Instead, she described love as something that can quietly exist in the background of everyday life, becoming most visible in moments of absence or grief.

It’s an idea many people may recognize only after losing someone important or sessions with her 🥰.

Lily

“For me love can be measured in many ways. It could be that smile that someone gives you, a hug that brings comfort, a caring hand when you need help or a silent companion when you need a presence and the feeling of being loved. In the end some people believe love must be loud and passionate. For me love is deeper than that. I feel it when people are kind and warmth is felt when they are around me.”

Reflection

Lily’s answer focused on the quieter forms of love that people sometimes overlook. Rather than describing love as dramatic or overwhelming, she described it through comfort, kindness, warmth, and presence.

Her response raises an interesting point about how differently people experience love. But what she says is true, because when I was her age I think that’s how I would have described it as well.

Caroline

“That’s a deep and beautiful question.

The instinctual notion that comes to mind is that love is everything that unites us all. We live for love. It is what keeps this planet alive. It is the core of everything.”

Reflection

Caroline’s answer approached love from the widest perspective of all.

Rather than focusing only on romantic relationships, she described love as something universal. A force that connects people, gives meaning to life, and reminds us we are not meant to go through the world alone. Her response carried a quiet optimism to it.

In a time where division, loneliness, and disconnection often feel overwhelming, the idea that love is still “the core of everything” feels important to remember.

Maybe love is bigger than relationships alone.

Maybe it’s compassion and connection. Perhaps it’s empathy with the willingness to care about others. And maybe that’s exactly what keeps people going.

My Definition of Love

For me, love is feeling safe enough to be fully myself with someone and knowing they’ll still stay.

Love isn’t perfection to me. It’s presence during the hard times and an understanding that we all carry scars, grief, fears, from past heartbreaks into new chapters of our life.

Yet it’s choosing not to weaponize those things against one another.

I, also, think real love is quieter than most people expect. It lives in loyalty, honesty, comfort, forgiveness, laughter during difficult times, and feeling at peace when someone is around instead of being constantly anxious. It’s not about never hurting or struggling. But more about not giving up on each other when life becomes human

And honestly, I think love is when someone becomes part of your everyday thoughts without effort. You want to tell them about the good things, the painful things, the random moments, and the victories no matter how small.

Final Thoughts

After hearing everyone’s answers and reflecting on my own, one thing became clear to me. Love is not one thing as Nadiia, Maya, Agnes, Lily and Caroline can attest to.

Somewhere between all of these answers, and healing I’ve gone through, I’ve started understanding my own definition more clearly too.

Maybe that’s why love can feel so complicated after heartbreak, grief, distance, loss, and disappointment. Because once you’ve experienced love deeply and lost it, you need to stop looking for perfection. Because you’ll never find it. I’ve tried.

You need to start looking for your own peace, honesty, effort and presence. Find someone who stays gentle with your heart when life gets difficult and you can trust enough to let your guard down and safe enough to exhale. Instead of running from you because the world has taught them to detach the second things become uncomfortable.

And maybe, just maybe the strongest kind of love of all is the kind that survives reality. The kind that understands people will struggle, get tired, carry scars, miss people, need reassurance, and still deserve compassion while fucking up somewhere along the way because we all do.

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