I Love Him More Than He Loves Me

There’s this constant ache in my chest, like I’m pouring out oceans of love while he offers back puddles. It’s hard to explain, but I feel it—this imbalance. I love him more than he loves me. And I’m stuck between the overwhelming need to give and the growing desire to protect myself from the crushing emptiness when he doesn’t reciprocate. It’s not even about big gestures—God, no—it’s about the quiet moments, the invisible weight of love I carry. Love shouldn’t be measurable, but my heart still feels that cosmic imbalance, that tilt.

Do you know what hurts the most? It’s not the silence. It’s not the casualness with which he meets the fullness of my devotion. It’s that part of me knows this. Deep down, part of me feels like a fool, surrendering to an uneven love. And yet, I choose to love him anyway—every single day, despite the gnawing weight of that knowledge. I lie awake some nights thinking of Khalil Gibran’s words in The Prophet, when he says, “To love and let it be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” And I wonder if our sea will always feel one-sided—me roaring and breaking waves on his shore while his waters barely reach for mine.

I can’t pretend not to wonder: what if he can’t give me what I give him? And is that enough? I know St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “Love is patient, love is kind…it bears all things, believes all things.” I try to hold onto that. I try to believe that love isn’t supposed to be transactional—but still, beneath the layers of patience and kindness, there’s a quiet hunger in me, a longing to be seen the way I see him.

There’s a truth we all know but hate admitting—that imbalance in love is far older than any of us. I think about Cleopatra and Mark Antony, their tempestuous affair, laced through history. Was she, as the stories go, the stronger thread binding them? Did she love him with an intensity that burned brighter than his own? Perhaps he adored her—yes—but maybe not with the same consuming fire she lit for him. A love that was always leaning, never quite even. Is that what we’re doomed to, those of us who love with too much heart? To always lean harder, press louder, until something cracks under the strain?

There’s this moment from Jane Eyre that always sticks with me. When Jane tells Rochester, “I am not an angel…but I will be your comforter: your better self shall be me.” But here’s the thing—in those moments, Rochester needed Jane, he yearned for her in his depths. In my case, sometimes I wonder... is there even a part of him that needs me? Or am I chasing his love while he stands still, too comfortable in what I give to ever think of running after me?

Some days, I chalk it up to God’s mysterious ways. Maybe He designed me to love more deeply, more fiercely, to give even when I don’t receive, because that’s how He loves us. I mean, can anyone really love God back with the same intensity He loves us? Can I ever repay the grace of His sacrifice? Of course not. I meditate on the Gospel, on Christ’s commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.” And when I think of that—how profound, how unconditionally holy that love is—it makes me feel less ashamed of this love I carry, even when it feels like I’m pouring it into a void. Because loving generously, even without returns, maybe that’s what makes it sacred.

But oh, how the human heart aches for its reflection! Even Rumi, the mystic who celebrated losing oneself in the Beloved, cried out in longing for the union of love to be mutual. He wrote: “Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there.” Must I forever wait in this garden, hoping he’ll show up with the same heartbeat as mine?

I keep circling back to love’s paradoxes. Maybe I’m wired for this. Maybe loving him more is my cross to bear. Or maybe it’s my strength. I think of those women you read about in history, the ones who loved so much it threatened to erase them, but they loved anyway. Like Heloise, writing soul-burning letters to Abelard, even after they were separated by circumstances far crueler than my own. She knew he didn’t feel her agony the same way—but she still sent her heart flying out to him in those words. She still chose to love. So why do I feel so broken for doing the same?

And yet, I also know I deserve more. There’s a part of me that whispers I should let go, that this isn’t what love is supposed to feel like. Love, as Anne Lamott says, should hold you like water in its cupped hands. And I deserve that—I do. But isn’t it also possible that love is a song we don’t sing in unison, a patchwork quilt sewn together with mismatched threads? That my abundance might someday teach him? That this is part of some divine plan I can’t yet see?

There’s love, then there’s waiting, and then there’s hoping. I don’t know which one will break me first. All I know is, I feel like a candle burning two flames—one for him and one for myself, slowly learning to love the light I give off, even if he never does.