Who Taught Us What Love Was Supposed to Look Like?

Love is one of the most powerful experiences we can have, but it is also one of the most difficult to define.

For some people, love feels like certainty. One person. One life. One shared future built slowly over time.

For others, love feels less fixed. It may still involve commitment, devotion and deep emotional loyalty, but it may not fit neatly into the version of love they were taught to want. Some people love one partner deeply while also exploring sexual connection outside the relationship. Some love more than one person. Some feel most secure in exclusivity. Some feel most honest when the relationship has room for more complexity.

This is something I hear often in therapy, from people of different ages, genders, sexual orientations and relationship histories. Not always in the same words, but often with the same emotional weight.

“Is this what I actually want, or is this what I was taught I should want?”

That question can be deeply unsettling.

Most of us do not enter relationships as blank slates. Long before we consciously choose a partner, we absorb ideas about what love should look like. We learn from our families, culture, religion, films, friends, social media and the relationships we witnessed growing up. We learn what counts as commitment, what counts as betrayal. We learn whether jealousy means love, whether sex and love must always belong in the same place. We learn whether a “real” relationship is defined by exclusivity, marriage, longevity, sacrifice, privacy, emotional dependence or sexual loyalty.

Some of those beliefs may still feel deeply true to us.

Some may not.

And sometimes the pain comes from not knowing the difference.

Clinical research has long shown that romantic love is not just one thing. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love describes love as involving different combinations of intimacy, passion and commitment, which helps explain why love can look and feel different across relationships and across time. Attachment research also suggests that romantic love is shaped by our early experiences of closeness, safety and emotional availability, meaning that love is never only about the present relationship. It is also filtered through what our nervous system learned about connection long before this partner arrived.

This matters because when couples speak about monogamy, non monogamy, desire, jealousy, sex or commitment, they are rarely only speaking about behaviour.

They are speaking about safety.

They are speaking about identity.

They are speaking about what love means to them.

For one person, monogamy may feel like emotional safety. It may feel like being chosen, protected and held. For another, monogamy may feel restrictive or inherited rather than consciously chosen. For one person, sexual exclusivity may feel inseparable from love. For another, sex may not carry the same emotional meaning, even when their love for their partner is genuine and deep.

Neither position is automatically more mature, more evolved or more loving.

The deeper question is whether the relationship structure is conscious, ethical, mutual and emotionally honest.

Research on consensual non monogamy challenges the assumption that monogamous relationships are always healthier or more satisfying. Studies have found that people in consensually non monogamous relationships can report similar levels of relationship quality, satisfaction and commitment to people in monogamous relationships. More recent reviews have also questioned the “monogamy superiority” assumption, suggesting that relationship wellbeing depends less on the structure itself and more on factors such as consent, communication, honesty, boundaries and mutual respect.

But this does not mean non monogamy is right for everyone.

It also does not mean monogamy is simply conditioning.

For many people, monogamy is not a prison. It is a deeply chosen value. It reflects how they love, how they bond, how they experience sex, and how they feel emotionally safe. For others, non monogamy is not avoidance or selfishness. It may be an honest expression of how they understand love, desire, autonomy and connection.

The problem is not monogamy.

The problem is unconsciousness.

The problem is when we never ask whether the version of love we are defending is actually ours.

This is where many people feel torn. They may not know whether their discomfort with non monogamy is a genuine personal boundary or an inherited belief. They may wonder whether their jealousy is telling them something important about their needs, or whether it is shaped by fear, comparison, shame or the belief that love must always involve possession.

That internal struggle can feel frightening.

Because questioning relationship norms is not just intellectual. It can feel like questioning your morality, your identity, your family system, your future and your sense of self.

This is why these conversations can become so painful for couples. One partner may be trying to explore freedom, authenticity or desire. The other may hear, “I am not enough.” One partner may be questioning inherited beliefs. The other may feel like the entire foundation of the relationship is being pulled away.

Both experiences deserve care.

A relationship cannot survive on theory alone. It is not enough to say, “Society conditioned us to be monogamous,” if one partner is devastated by the idea of sexual openness. It is also not enough to say, “Non monogamy is wrong,” without reflecting on where that belief comes from and whether it is truly aligned with one’s own values.

The work is not to force yourself into a relationship structure that hurts you.

The work is to become honest about why it hurts.

Is it because this genuinely violates something sacred in you?

Or because your body does not feel safe sharing sexual or romantic intimacy?

Is it because you fear abandonment?

Or because you were taught that being chosen only counts if no one else is desired?

Is it because you are moving away from old beliefs and grieving the certainty they once gave you?

These are not easy questions. But they are important ones.

Because love is not only about who we choose. It is also about what we believe choice should mean.

For some couples, the answer will be monogamy. Not because society told them to, but because exclusivity genuinely reflects their values, needs and emotional world.

For others, the answer may be some form of consensual non monogamy. Not because they love less, but because love and sexual exclusivity do not hold the same meaning for them.

For others, the answer may be grief. The painful recognition that two people can love each other deeply and still need different things from love.

That is one of the hardest truths in relationships.

Love is powerful, but it is not always enough to make two people compatible in how they need to be loved.

Love can heal us, but it can also confront us. It can expose the beliefs we inherited, the fears we avoided, the desires we judged, and the parts of ourselves we thought we had already understood. It can ask us to become more honest than we ever planned to be.

Sometimes love asks us to commit, to let go and to question the very rules we thought were keeping us safe.

And maybe the most honest place to begin is not by asking, “What should love look like?”

Maybe it is by asking:

“Who taught me this version of love, and does it still belong to me?”