when your love is a trauma response

This is what can happen
when you survive without safety —
you turn love into a plan.

You build frameworks.
You offer what you wish you had.
And you give it so fully,
you forget it’s not universal.

Your love becomes architecture.
Structured. Precise.
And often… uninvited.

Because the truth is —
when we haven’t fully grieved what we didn’t receive,
we project it onto someone else as a gift
that doubles as a demand.

“Let me love you better than I was loved”
slowly becomes
“Let me shape you into someone who won’t suffer the way I did.”

But love built on protection
can feel like performance.
Even if your heart was in the right place.

Their leaving doesn’t mean they’re ungrateful.
It might mean your love
was a little too much you
and not enough them.

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of your love feels like a solution — not a surrender?

🌒 go deeper:

→ read: protective projection, emotional enmeshment + misattuned repair → chapter: decoding