before anything else, there is this

why friendship should teach us what love is supposed to look like

there’s a certain kind of love: it does not declare itself as life-altering. it does not demand to be defined, or claimed in the ways other loves insist upon.

and yet, it is the one that endures longest.

platonic love is often mistaken for something lesser. something secondary. a prelude, perhaps, to a title of more significance.

but i think that’s a failure of language. of perception.

because there’s a fierceness in the love found within friendship that other forms rarely sustain.

friendship feels too light a word for everything it holds within. too casual for the kind of knowing it contains.

it is not someone who knows you, but rather someone who has witnessed you. in all your unremarkable moments, in all the unguarded hours.

they have seen you when you’re not performing. when you’re not trying to be liked. and through it all, they’ve stayed - and it’s a devotion we do not speak of enough.

because with romantic love, there’s often a distortion.

a willingness to excuse what should not be excused. to tolerate what should not be tolerated. it is mistaken for depth because it feels like urgency.

the language of harm is softened: “they didn’t mean it” and “it’s complicated”

you excuse cruelty when it’s wrapped in longing. you excuse inconsistency because it is followed by affection. you excuse absence, because presence - when it finally arrives - feels overwhelming enough to justify the wait.

and in doing so, you begin to negotiate your own dignity. you bend it, reshape it. you chip away at it in pieces, as though love requires that kind of sacrifice to breathe.

but it doesn’t - because love, in its truest from, was never meant to be negotiated like that.

yet, you allow for it. again and again.

you remain in spaces that diminish you, because you’ve been taught intensity is evidence of depth, of unwavering loyalty. that your suffering is proof of your sincerity.

but if you placed that same dynamic within friendship - if someone spoke to you with the same carelessness, the easy cruelty - you would leave.

you would not call it love, or justify the harm.

so why is it that you accept less, in the places you claim to feel the most?

familial love grants no generosity.

it arrives before you understand what love is. before you have the language to question it. it shapes you in its silence. it is the first place you learn what love feels like, and more importantly, what it costs.

and sometimes, it is soft and generous, the closest thing to safety you will ever know.

but oftentimes, it is something else entirely.

something that asks more than it gives.

you were still loved, ofcourse you were, but only within certain conditions. only within certain expectations.

love was only granted once you’d fulfilled the contract.

you were held, but not always understood.

and so you learnt quietly, that love can come with requirements. that it can be something you earn, something you maintain, something that can be withdrawn if you are not careful. and this becomes your blueprint.

self-love, then, is not instinctive.

it is not something that appears fully formed.

it’s hesitant. uneven. contradictory.

one part insists you are enough, and the other shatters that belief - piece by piece.

an argument you carry within yourself.

because how do you love something you were taught to hate?

how do you accept something you’ve spent years trying to kill?

self-love is recognising the parts of you that are difficult and unkind - and realising still, that they do not disqualify you from being worthy of care.

it is not a gentle love, and it is certainly not a stable one. it is something you build, and destroy within the same breath. and most days you won’t be able to tell whether you wanted to or not.

it’s why platonic love matters far more than we allow it to.

it does not ask for performance or change. it does not require you to shrink or stretch or reshape yourself into something more palatable.

it meets you as you are, where you are, and stays.

and it is not perfect, it doesn’t exist without conflict, fractures, failures. but it also does not thrive on those. it does not need your tears to sustain itself. it isn’t built on absence, but rather presence. on the repeated decision to remain in someone’s life. on understanding that closeness does not need pain as evidence.

it’s most important because it teaches you what love looks like without distortion. without the instability and without the quiet violence you’ve learnt to survive elsewhere.

it teaches you love can exist without consuming you, that it can steady and gentle. that it can hold you without asking for everything you have to give.

and once you’ve truly known that love - it becomes difficult to accept anything that asks less of you and takes more, because you’ve seen what love looks like in its purest form, how it looks when you aren’t being diminished by it.

but just like all else, it is not immune to change.

it breaks differently. through slow erosion.

through distance that was never acknowledged, through conversations that faded out, through silences stretched so long, they became tangible.

but even in that, it shapes you - irrevocably.

i think we misunderstand love when we place it on a pedestal, when we decide some forms matter more than others. because the truth is: the way you’re loved in friendship will shape everything else you accept. it becomes the standard, whether you realise it or not. the measure against which all other forms of love should be held.

because it does not burn, it does not leave you questioning your worth.

it stays.

and sometimes, in a world that has taught us to equate love with intensity, that kind of steadiness is the most radical thing of all.