Untried Love

On the silent assassin of love, self-sabotage, and the walls we build to keep ourselves lonely

“The Lovers” (1928) by René Magritte — this surrealist painting depicts two individuals kissing, their faces obscured by white cloths. The concealed identities symbolise the emotional barriers and the inability to fully connect, mirroring the themes of guardedness and isolation.

He was the kind of man who lived in the fortress of his mind, where the walls were thick, the gates rusted shut, and the drawbridge seldom lowered. Life had taught him to be cautious, to expect betrayal at the hand extended toward him. Love, for him, was a loaded word, a trickster hiding sharp edges behind soft whispers. So when she came into his life, all open palms and unguarded tenderness, he mistook her devotion for naivety, her admiration for a mirage. How could anyone truly love him without wanting something in return? And so, he did what he always did when someone got too close — he retreated, layer by layer, into himself, convinced he was protecting her from the eventual disappointment of knowing him.

She wasn’t like the others, though, and he knew it. Her love didn’t come with conditions or ultimatums; it wasn’t a negotiation. It was a quiet, steadfast presence — a light left on for him, no matter how late he wandered home. She admired him in ways he couldn’t fathom, holding up the fragile pieces of himself he had long disowned and calling them beautiful. Her love was maddeningly simple: she didn’t ask for wealth, status, or promises he couldn’t keep. All she wanted was him — his attention, his tenderness, his time. But he couldn’t give her that. Her love was too big, too overwhelming, a mirror reflecting the parts of himself he had spent a lifetime avoiding. And so, he began to withdraw, his silences growing longer, his presence more fleeting, until the absence of him became louder than any words she could say.

The irony was not lost on him. Here he was, running from the only person who had never hurt him, the only woman who had given him love untainted by manipulation or cruelty. But her affection felt like an indictment of his inadequacy, her unwavering faith in him a weight he could not carry. What if he wasn’t the man she thought he was? What if her love, so unconditional and pure, exposed every crack in his carefully constructed armour? And so, he built distance between them, brick by brick, until the chasm was insurmountable. He told himself it was for the best, that she deserved someone who could love her as fully as she loved him, and simply disappeared. But deep down, he knew the truth: he was afraid. Afraid of being seen. Afraid of being known.

By the time he realised what he had lost, it was too late. She had stopped waiting for the drawbridge to lower, had stopped trying to cross the ocean between them. Her love, once so constant, now echoed faintly in the hollow chambers of his life. He thought of her often, though he would never admit it, replaying moments of her laughter, her touch, the way she had looked at him as if he were the only man in the world. But those memories were ghosts, haunting him with a question he could never answer: what might have been if he had dared to meet her love, not with fear, but with courage?

Fear is a master illusionist, a cunning architect of walls so high we mistake them for protection. It convinces us that love is a battlefield where surrender means defeat, where vulnerability is a liability rather than the essence of connection. But the truth is far simpler and far more painful: fear is not guarding us from harm — it is starving us of life. Fear is the voice that tells us to run before we are left, to wound before we are wounded, to retreat before we are ever truly seen. And so, we build our fortresses, mistake loneliness for safety, and call it self-preservation.

The irony is that love asks for none of the things we think it does. It does not demand perfection, nor does it require guarantees. It does not tally up past betrayals like a bookkeeper of pain, nor does it come with the fine print of conditions we assume it must. Love, at its core, is simple: it asks only to be met. But meeting it means stepping into the light, unarmed, unmasked, and without the well-rehearsed defenses we believe will save us from pain. And that is where fear plays its cruelest trick — by convincing us that love is a risk too great, when in reality, it is the only thing worth risking at all.

“Femme aux Bras Croisés” (1901-02) by Pablo Picasso — this painting portrays a woman with folded arms, conveying a profound sense of isolation and introspection. Created during Picasso’s Blue Period, it reflects themes of melancholy and emotional distance.

As for regret… it is not the sharp, sudden pain of a single moment; it is the slow erosion of what could have been. It is not the grand heartbreak of loss, but the quiet knowledge that we were given a door and chose never to walk through it. We tell ourselves we were being careful, that we needed more time, that our wounds had not yet healed — but love does not wait for us to be ready. It arrives when it arrives, and the only choice we are ever truly given is whether we will meet it with courage or with hesitation. And hesitation is the silent assassin of love. Not rejection, not betrayal — just the slow, suffocating pause that allows fear to win by default.

In the end, the greatest tragedy is not love lost but love left untried. We are never truly protecting ourselves when we push love away — we are simply ensuring that we will one day look back and wonder what might have been. The weight of being loved is not a burden but a mirror, reflecting back to us all the parts of ourselves we would rather not see. To accept love is to accept that we are worthy of it, even in our mess, even in our flaws, even in our fear. The real enemy of the heart is not rejection — it is the belief that we are unworthy before we are even given a chance to be loved at all.

With the echo of what might have been,

T.

“Psyche Abandoned” (1795) by Jacques-Louis David — this painting illustrates the mythological figure Psyche in a moment of abandonment and despair. Her posture and expression evoke feelings of vulnerability and the pain of lost love, aligning with themes of emotional withdrawal.