Words That Matter: When Love Needs to Be Spoken | PeonyMagazine

 

I used to think love didn’t need to be explained. I remember sitting across from someone I cared about, the conversation drifting past my feelings without ever touching them. Nothing was wrong, exactly. There was no argument, no goodbye. Just an unspoken understanding that as long as we were still there, still choosing each other, everything must be fine.

Words felt optional, even unnecessary. I told myself actions mattered more, that needing reassurance was a weakness I should eventually outgrow. 

Then I fell in love with someone who rarely said what they felt. 

He wasn’t unkind. He just believed that love was understood. When I needed reassurance, he would offer logic instead of comfort. It usually came up in small moments. Late at night, when the day was finally quiet, I asked something simple, “Do you still feel the same about us?” He would look at me, confused more than annoyed, and say, “You know I care. Why do I need to say it?”

When I tried to explain why hearing it mattered, he brushed it off gently. “You’re overthinking,” he said, as if the feeling itself was the problem. That was when I learned to stop asking, even when the question stayed with me. 

At first, I adjusted. I learned to read between the lines. I paid attention to gestures, timing, and effort. I translated his silence into meaning because I wanted the relationship to work. I told myself that wanting words was childish, that I should be grateful for what I was given. 

But over time, the quiet began to feel heavy. 

I found myself asking small questions that carried more weight than they should have. Do you still want this? Did I do something wrong? Am I enough? I didn’t ask often. I didn’t want to seem needy. But when I did, his answers felt careful, distant, unfinished. 

What I needed wasn’t grand declarations. I wasn’t asking for poetry. I just wanted to hear that I mattered. 

I didn’t realize how much words shaped my sense of safety until I stopped receiving them. Without affirmation, doubt filled the space. I started measuring myself through his moods, his tone, the pauses between his replies. Love became something I tried to earn instead of something I rested in. 

We argued about it more than once. I tried to explain that words weren’t decoration to me, they were grounding. They made love feel real. He struggled to understand why something so simple felt so necessary. 

One night, after another long conversation that went nowhere, I said quietly, “When you don’t say anything, I start to disappear.”

That was the closest I came to naming the truth. 

We didn’t end because of one fight or one missing sentence. We ended slowly, through a growing distance neither of us knew how to cross. He loved in ways that felt solid to him. I needed love that spoke. 

After the relationship ended, I sat with an uncomfortable realization: I had been shrinking my needs to fit someone else’s comfort. I had treated my desire for affirmation as something to fix, instead of something to honor. 

Words of affirmation aren’t about constant praise. 

They’re about clarity. About knowing where you stand.
About being named out loud so you don’t have to guess your place in someone’s life.

Now, I pay closer attention to how love sounds. I notice when someone chooses their words with care. When they say what they feel instead of assuming it’s obvious. When affection is spoken, not withheld. 

More: https://peonymagazine.com/special-edition/words-that-matter/