What It Means To Be Met

I’ve been on a quest to have healthy relationships for most of my adult life.

In my late twenties, I had to learn how to build and sustain deep friendships. It wasn’t something that came naturally, but I did the work—showing up, being honest, learning to be a good friend. I’m grateful I did, because now I have decades-long friendships with incredible women who have stood beside me through every season.

Romantic relationships, though, have been a more complicated classroom.

I didn’t grow up seeing what a healthy partnership looked like. I carried a deep deficit of self-worth, self-love, and self-respect, tangled up with codependency. An abusive teenage relationship rewired my attachment system in painful ways that took years to even understand. I’ve been living and learning the hard way ever since—reading everything I could about attachment, communication, and healing.

And still, the old wiring runs deep. You don’t know what you don’t know—until you do.

For much of my life, when someone didn’t show up for me, I assumed it was because I’d asked for too much. I told myself I should be more patient, less emotional, more self-sufficient. I blamed myself for my own hurt, as if wanting care made me difficult to love.

What I see now is that my guilt wasn’t really about anyone else—it was about my past.

I grew up with almost no one there for me in times of need.

My mom wasn’t around, and comforting others wasn’t my dad’s strength.

So from an early age, I learned to turn inward.

To self-soothe.

To expect nothing.

And to never inconvenience anyone by asking for what I might need—because, in truth, I wasn’t supposed to have needs.

Over time, as I learned to have healthier friendships and connections, I began to see that people who love each other do show up. They comfort. They care. They make time. I’ve witnessed it in my friends’ partnerships and in moments of my own life when love showed up simply and consistently.

One day, in the midst of trying to understand why unmet needs hurt so deeply, I picked up Secure Love by Julie Menanno.

On page nine, I read this:

“Partners who are securely attached are reliable sources of intimacy, support, and comfort.”

Wait—what?

I reread it. Underlined it. Devoured the entire chapter.

You mean it’s actually healthy and normal to expect the people we love to offer intimacy, support, and comfort consistently—especially in times of great need?

That sentence changed everything.

Because what I had been taught—by life, by loss, by absence—was that needing less made me easier to love. But the truth is, love isn’t earned by being less needy, quieter, or easier.

Real love welcomes your needs and meets them with presence.

Real love shows up.

This journey has been enlightening, painful, and full of lessons I’m still learning to integrate.

But this one—this understanding that my needs aren’t a burden—they’re simply human—

this one changed everything.