Co-authored by Mark Shelvock and Dr. Phyllis Kosminsky.

Nothing is riskier than love, yet we are often taught to imagine love as gentle and benign. In popular culture, love is often framed as something that soothes us, completes us, or protects us from pain.

Yet, this version of love leaves out something essential. Love, from the beginning, was never meant to be risk-free.

To love someone is to offer your most tender, most unarmoured and vulnerable self, without any assurance that this offering will be met. Even when love is met, another risk immediately follows: the risk of loss. So, why do we do it?

We love because we have no choice. We are deeply relational beings before we are anything else.

Connection is not a preference or a personality trait; it is a biological, social, and psychological imperative. Being held within a human web of connection is what steadies us in a world that can feel too vast, too unpredictable, and too much to face alone.

From the moment we take our first breath, we are all instinct and sensation. Our emerging psyches and nervous systems scan the world around us, asking ancient questions:

Who is here?

Who is near?

Very quickly, those questions deepen…

Who is safe?

Who is available?

Who will come when I call?

What we learn in these earliest moments does not stay in childhood. It quietly........

© Psychology Today