People confess their love for each other too soon, too quickly, too heartbreakingly fast without understanding that love, honest love doesn’t happen without seeing someone deeply and painfully vulnerable.

Human beings are deeply, terribly troubled creatures who are only at their most honest when they are vulnerable. If you want to know the makings of your friends, of your lover, of your parents, just watch them when they are in angry or in pain.

So when you say you love them, do you really? Have you seen them at their deepest truth? All the layers stripped away and sheer primitive emotion?

Have you seen them weak?

Have you seen them angry?

Have you seen them cry?

Love, real love, only happens when you see someone at the very worst of themselves, and still find your heart full with softness and warmth for them. Before you confess the wholeness of your love for someone, get so deeply entangled in a relationship that you are taken completely by surprise at negative behaviour from them, see them without the mask we all wear for the world everyday, the mask that says, “I’m fine” when it means “I’m broken”.

And then decide if you love them, or if you must let them go.