To be loved is to be known

"Love is the stack of biographies on my nightstand with a bookmark near the end"

There is something profoundly sweet about someone being curious about you. Someone wanting to learn every insignificant detail about you and how you function. Why you prefer this restaurant over that one. What volume you keep your TV at. How you got that scar. Your opinions on olives.

To be loved is to be known.

I know my grandpa doesn’t like pasta and that he prefers doing sudokus with a pen instead of a pencil. I know my grandma likes having the radio on while she cooks. That she writes down today’s temperature in a calendar, and calls her cousin at 11:00 o’clock every day.

I know my dad curls his hand inwards a little when he sleeps. That my mom doesn’t use butter on her bread. That my friend’s aunt gave her that gold necklace she never takes off, and that she gets a headache if she wears a tight ponytail for too long.

I heard somewhere that if you got to see someone in their most personal, vulnerable moments—if you could see all the tiny things they smile or cry or worry about—you wouldn’t be able to not love them. To not care about them in any way, even the slightest. It’s the reason we sometimes sympathise with movie-villains. We recognise their humanity in all the quiet details and soft spots.

That’s where real intimacy exists.

Knowing why someone shifted in their seat during a movie scene. Knowing they can’t eat too many almonds and get quiet when something is bothering them. It’s knowing they fidget with their left earring when they’re nervous. Or that they struggle to fall asleep before an event.

I have always thought I wanted love at first sight, the lightning bolt moment, fate. But what I have come to realise is that fate isn’t really that romantic. Fate takes choice out of the equation. And it’s intentionally choosing someone, well aware of their strengths and quirks and flaws, that’s romantic.¹

Someone fully knowing you and thinking yes. I love you because I know you.

For someone to get to that point though, you have to let them—I have to let them. If you want to be deeply loved, platonically or romantically, you have to let yourself be deeply known. That’s scary. Opening up and being vulnerable can be really, really difficult. Even with the people closest to you. It requires you to not stop someone when they reach for the closet door where all your mess is stored. It requires you to say this is who I am and what I’ve got, and simply hope.

Hope they treat it gently. Hope it doesn’t make them laugh. Or leave.

Because there is the risk of them leaving. There is the risk of you laying it all out on the table and it not being enough. Or too much. Too out-there. Not the right kind.

It requires you to surrender. To trust that who you are in the boring, embarrassing, scared moments of life is okay. That what you see as big and deal-breaky, they see as adorable or deal-able.

And there is truly nothing better than that.

A crush is just a lack of information. I guess that’s exactly what’s both so thrilling and frightening about it. That when the database starts to grow, things will either evolve or dissolve.

“He loves history. He wanted to write a biography of John Quincy Adams. I, shamefully, knew almost nothing about John Quincy Adams, so I went online and bought every biography of him I could find. One day, he called me, claiming we wouldn’t work out long term. He said he loved me but that we had different interests. “What does love mean to you?” I said. “That’s an impossible question,” he replied. I, however, find love to be quite simple. Love is the stack of biographies on my nightstand with a bookmark near the end” - Julia Nicole Camp.

People have a tendency to melt into our lives. We listen to them ramble on about something they’re obsessed with, and even if we don’t share the same enthusiasm, we suddenly take note of news mentioning that thing. We hear a song they like on the radio and truly listen to it. We buy kiwi at the grocery store even though we haven’t thought about buying it in years, just because they mentioned craving it.

Love changes what we pay attention to. We start noticing things they care about because we care about them. We learn things we will continue to know even if we end up growing apart.

A postcard with lemons on it – they would love it. A sparkly jacket at a thrift store – it would fit them so well. An article about organic agriculture – right up their alley.

I think love is getting frustrated with someone over and over again, but always wanting to return to them. It’s being curious about who they might be today, while still remembering who they were yesterday. It’s resting in the fact that even on the messiest of days, they still want to know you, and you them.

This made me think of you. You can have the blue one, I know that’s your favourite. How did you sleep? How’s your mind today? I bought us some coffee – don’t worry, I got yours with oat milk.

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1. The general idea of this is from the movie ‘Love in the Villa’ (2022)