When Love Demands Silence, It Isn’t Love

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come from betrayal or abandonment.
It comes from the slow erosion of being tolerated instead of celebrated.

It starts quietly. A dismissive comment. A subtle eye roll. A conversation where curiosity is replaced with condescension.
Maybe someone says, “I don’t care what you think.”
Maybe they say your beliefs are “wrong.”
Maybe they just make it clear:

You are only welcome here as long as you don’t make anyone uncomfortable.

For many, this shows up in relationships where one partner’s truth—spiritual, emotional, or otherwise—is seen as inconvenient. Where difference is not met with respect, but with judgment. Where the cost of peace is silence.

It might be politics. Or queerness. Or creative expression. Or healing practices.
It’s about anything sacred being made to feel shameful.

And often, this happens in long-term relationships—where time and history blur the line between love and control.
Where devotion gets twisted into duty.
Where someone stays, not because they’re thriving, but because leaving feels like betrayal.

But here's the truth:
If love requires you to abandon yourself to keep it, it’s not love. It’s captivity.

There comes a moment—sometimes triggered by a single sentence or a sudden realization—when a person sees it clearly:

They haven’t been “in love” for a long time.
They’ve simply been present. Attached. Devoted to a structure that no longer holds soul.
And they’re done making themselves small to fit someone else’s comfort zone.

Because the kind of love worth staying for?
It doesn’t silence your fire.
It doesn’t ask for invisibility.
It doesn’t recoil from your magic, your mess, or your evolution.

Real love says, “I see you.”
And not just the curated, convenient parts.
All of you.

So for anyone standing at that threshold, wondering if they’re asking too much:
You’re not.
You’re asking to be met.

And if someone can’t meet you there, it’s okay to walk away—not out of hate, but in reverence for the sacred within you that refuses to go quiet.

Because at the end of the day?
You have to be the love you want to find in the world.
Honest. Brave. Free.
Unapologetically whole.

xo,

Jade