You’re Not Hard to Love — They Were Just Unequipped to Love Deeply - Good Men

Posted Sunday at 02:30 PM3 days

You weren’t too much. You weren’t too emotional. You weren’t hard to love.

But when you love someone who can’t meet you — emotionally, spiritually, consistently — you start internalizing their limitations as your flaws.

You begin to believe the narrative they projected onto you. That love is something you have to earn. That peace is something you have to beg for. That being chosen requires shrinking yourself.

It’s time to unlearn that.

This isn’t just a love story gone wrong. This is about your relationship with yourself — and how to rewrite the story you tell when someone walks away.

Section 1: Where the “Hard to Love” Wound Begins

It usually starts before the relationship. Maybe childhood:

Where emotional needs were seen as burdens
Where love was earned through perfection, performance, or people-pleasing

So when you meet someone who avoids, withholds, or minimizes your needs… it feels familiar. It feels like home.

You don’t chase them because you’re desperate. You chase because you were conditioned to believe you had to work for love.

Section 2: What Being With the Wrong Person Teaches You (Falsely)

Being with someone emotionally unavailable teaches you things that are fundamentally untrue:

That you’re too intense
That needing reassurance is weakness
That your boundaries are demands
That love is a test, not a sanctuary

But their inability to love deeply isn’t proof that you’re too much. It’s proof they’re unequipped. And unequipped love is not a mirror of your worth.

Being with someone emotionally unavailable teaches you things that are fundamentally untrue:

That you’re too intense
That needing reassurance is weakness
That your boundaries are demands
That love is a test, not a sanctuary

But their inability to love deeply isn’t proof that you’re too much. It’s proof they’re unequipped. And unequipped love is not a mirror of your worth.

Section 3: How to Know It Was Never About You Being Hard to Love

Real love doesn’t:

Confuse you
Make you beg
Keep you guessing

When someone is emotionally available and secure, they don’t punish you for having needs. They respond to them. They don’t label your sensitivity as a flaw — they see it as depth.

You’re not too much. You’re just too self-aware for someone who hasn’t done the work.

Section 4: Healing the Scar of Feeling Unlovable

Write a new narrative.

Instead of “I’m hard to love,” try “I’ve been loving people who weren’t available to receive it.”

Reparent your inner child.

Speak to the part of you that learned love had to be earned. Show them that love is their birthright.

Choose partners who speak the language of consistency.

Emotional safety is the standard now — not the exception.

Stop mistaking chaos for chemistry.

Familiar doesn’t mean compatible. It just means unhealed.

Validate yourself before anyone else.

You are allowed to exist fully — without shrinking, performing, or proving.

Section 5: You Were Always Lovable — Even When They Didn’t See It

Their inability to show up was not a reflection of your value. It was a revelation of their limitations.

You were lovable even when:

They ghosted
They breadcrumbed
They withheld affection
They blamed you for their distance

You were worthy even when it felt like you had to beg for basic things. That wasn’t love. That was survival dressed up in codependency.

And now, you’re choosing something different.

It Was Never About Your Lovability — It Was About Their Capacity

You are not hard to love. You were just loving people who didn’t know how to receive you.

Stop explaining your worth to people committed to misunderstanding you. Stop auditioning for love in rooms that require your silence.

The next chapter starts with this truth: You are easy to love when you are loved by someone ready for you. And until then — be that someone for yourself.