What I Have Learned About Being Loved

I have been useful to a lot of people.

That is not the same thing as being loved.

That sentence is harder to write than I wish it were. It is also one of the truest things I know.

For much of my life, I have known how to be needed. I knew how to show up. I knew how to speak. I knew how to work. I knew how to pastor, teach, encourage, counsel, carry, fix, mediate, and help. I knew how to walk into painful situations and try to bring calm. I knew how to listen to people when their lives were coming apart. I knew how to give words to other people’s confusion.

But being useful is not the same thing as being loved.

Being admired is not the same thing as being loved.

Being needed is not the same thing as being loved.

And if a person is not careful, he can spend a lifetime confusing those things.

I think a lot of us do.

We learn early what brings approval. We learn what keeps people close. We learn what makes us valuable in a room. Some people learn to be funny. Some learn to be strong. Some learn to be beautiful. Some learn to be successful. Some learn to be quiet. Some learn to be agreeable. Some learn to become indispensable.

That last one has been familiar to me.

If I am needed, maybe I will not be left.

If I am helpful, maybe I will be wanted.

If I can carry enough, fix enough, give enough, listen enough, and show up enough, maybe someone will finally see me and stay.

That may not be the sentence we say out loud, but it can be the sentence running quietly underneath the life.

There is a little boy in many grown men who still wants to be loved.

I know that little boy.

I had a good mother and father. I had supportive older brothers. I lived a good life in many ways. I am not writing this as if I was never loved or never cared for. That would not be honest. I have been blessed. I have been helped. I have been supported. I have been encouraged. I have had people in my life who cared deeply for me.

But a person can be loved in real ways and still carry places inside that feel untouched.

That is one of the contradictions of being human.

I have lived long enough to know that contradiction well. I have been a pastor, a husband, a father, a teacher, a friend, a counselor, and an encourager. I have tried to help hundreds of people keep living when they were ready to give up. I have spoken words that gave others strength while still struggling to know how to receive love in the places where I felt weak.

That is the mystery of the wounded healer.

We often help people in the very places where we are still learning how to be whole.

This does not make the help false.

It makes it human.

The danger is that we can begin to make our usefulness the price of our existence. We can believe, without ever saying it directly, that we have to earn the right to be loved. We have to perform. We have to produce. We have to rescue. We have to be interesting, spiritual, generous, available, wise, strong, charming, or needed.

But love that has to be purchased by self-abandonment is not love in its healthiest form.

It may be attachment.

It may be dependency.

It may be admiration.

It may be need.

It may even be affection.

But love, at its healthiest, does not require a person to disappear in order to remain wanted.

That has been a hard lesson for me.

I have not always loved well. I have not always known how to be loved well. I have made mistakes in relationships. I have carried loneliness into places where I should have carried wisdom. I have looked for comfort in ways that sometimes created more confusion. I have mistaken attention for love and need for connection. I have wanted to be held, known, chosen, and supported, and that longing has made me both compassionate and vulnerable.

I do not say that to condemn myself.

I say it because honesty is part of healing.

One of the most dangerous things we can do with loneliness is pretend we are above it.

We are not.

Human beings are made for connection. We are not machines. We are not ideas. We are not merely workers, leaders, parents, pastors, teachers, or providers. We are souls. We are bodies. We are memories. We are longings. We are stories. We are people who need to be seen and not merely used.

That need is not weakness.

But it can become dangerous when it is unconscious.

An unconscious longing to be loved can make a person say yes when he should say no. It can make him tolerate treatment he should have walked away from. It can make him confuse intensity with intimacy. It can make him ignore reality because the fantasy feels warmer than the truth. It can make him call self-abandonment devotion. It can make him stay too long in what is unhealthy and reach too quickly for what is unwise.

The longing itself is not the enemy.

Unconscious longing is.

That is why being loved begins, strangely enough, with learning how to tell the truth to yourself.

What am I actually wanting?

What am I afraid will happen if I stop performing?

Am I giving from love, or am I giving because I am afraid of being left?

Am I being generous, or am I trying to purchase closeness?

Am I being patient, or am I avoiding the truth?

Am I caring for someone, or am I abandoning myself again?

These are not easy questions.

But they are necessary ones.

Because real love cannot grow where everyone is pretending.

I am learning that being loved requires a kind of courage I did not understand when I was younger. It requires the courage to be known without performing. It requires the courage to let someone see the truth, not just the useful version of me. It requires the courage to stop managing every room and every relationship through guilt, fear, charm, help, or availability.

It also requires the courage to receive.

That may be harder than giving.

Giving lets us stay in control. Helping lets us remain strong. Encouraging others lets us stand in the role of the one who has something to offer. But receiving requires humility. It requires openness. It requires admitting that I am not just a voice, a worker, a leader, or a source of wisdom. I am also a man who needs grace, tenderness, patience, correction, companionship, and love.

That is not always easy to admit.

But it is true.

There is another lesson here.

If I want to be loved well, I have to become someone who can love without resentment.

That means boundaries matter.

Self-respect matters.

Honesty matters.

Consciousness matters.

Because when we do not love ourselves truthfully, we often ask other people to solve a wound they did not create and cannot fully heal. We put too much weight on them. We ask them to become proof that we are worthy. We make their attention responsible for our peace. Then when they fail, as all human beings do, we become disappointed, angry, cynical, or desperate.

That is too much pressure to put on another person.

Love is not meant to carry the full weight of an unlived life.

It is meant to share life.

That sentence matters to me.

Love is not meant to replace the soul.

It is meant to meet the soul.

Maybe that is why the work of keeping the soul alive is connected to the work of being loved. A deadened soul cannot receive love well. A resentful soul cannot give love freely. A frightened soul will cling. A guilty soul will overgive. A lonely soul may settle for attention and call it intimacy.

But a living soul begins to love differently.

A living soul can say yes without losing itself.

It can say no without hatred.

It can give without trying to buy belonging.

It can receive without shame.

It can be alone without collapsing.

It can be with another person without disappearing.

That is the kind of love I want to keep learning.

I am sixty-three years old, and I am still learning it.

That may sound late, but I am not sure love is something we ever finish learning. Maybe we keep learning it as long as we keep living. Maybe every honest season gives us another chance to ask what is real, what is healthy, what is true, and what kind of person we are becoming in the presence of others.

What I have learned is this:

Being loved is not the same thing as being needed.

It is not the same thing as being admired.

It is not the same thing as being useful.

Being loved means being known without having to disappear.

It means being received without having to perform.

It means being close without being consumed.

It means being honest enough to stop buying affection with self-abandonment and humble enough to receive care without shame.

And maybe one of the great freedoms in life is finally learning that I do not have to become indispensable in order to be worthy of love.

The DKP Word 2026
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