Sami Bsoul | The Psychology of Misreading Love
Sami Bsoul, PhD
When someone says, “I love you,” most of us hear more than four words.
We hear safety.
We hear commitment.
We hear desire.
We hear I choose you.
Sometimes we hear a promise that was never actually made.
That is where things get complicated.
Someone can love you and still hurt you.
Another can love you and
still be incapable of giving you what you need.
And some can love you and still leave.
And someone can sincerely say, “I love you,” while the relationship is completely wrong for you.
We do not like this.
We want love to settle the argument.
If the love is real, we think, the relationship must be real.
If they love me, they must be good for me.
If they love me, they would not do this.
If they love me, they will change.
If they love me, they will stay.
But love does not make those promises.
Love is a feeling. A relationship is a pattern of behavior.
The two can exist together.
They can also pull in opposite directions.
That is one of the least romantic things you can say about love.
And one of the most important.
Someone can feel enormous love for you and still be terrible at loving you.
They may need you.
They might desire you.
They may fear losing you.
They might feel attached to you.
They may feel guilty when they hurt you.
They might even be devastated at the thought of life without you.
None of that automatically tells you whether they know how to build a relationship in which you can breathe.
This is where people get confused.
They ask:
But do they love me?”
Sometimes that is the wrong question.
A better question is:
“What happens to me when I am loved by this person?”
Do you become more yourself?
Or smaller?
Do you become more honest?
Or more careful?
Do you feel free to disagree?
Or do you learn which parts of yourself cause trouble?
Can you say no without being punished?
Can you tell them they hurt you without having to comfort them for being confronted?
Can you change your mind?
Can you become more independent without threatening the relationship?
Can you be inconvenient?
Because it is easy to love someone when they are giving you what you want.
The harder test comes when they stop.
When they disagree.
When they disappoint you.
When they set a boundary.
When they stop admiring you.
When they become less useful to you.
When they become more themselves.
That is where love gets expensive.
And this is where I think we misunderstand the sentence “I love you.”
We often treat it as evidence.
It isn't.
It is information about what someone feels.
But it does not tell you everything else you need to know.
If someone says, “I love you,” you know something.
You know they are telling you that they experience some form of love toward you.
You do not automatically know that they are honest.
You do not know that they respect your boundaries.
You do not know that you are compatible.
You do not know that they will stay.
You do not know that they will change.
You do not even know that they understand what love requires from them.
And that last one matters.
Because love can be real and still be mixed with need, fear, dependency, selfishness, desire, or the terror of losing someone.
That does not necessarily make the love false.
Human beings rarely love from one clean motive.
The problem begins when we mistake someone's need for us for their capacity to care for us.
Those are not the same thing.
Someone can need you desperately and still not know how to treat you well.
Someone can be terrified of losing you and still repeatedly make you feel alone.
Someone can say, “You are everything to me,” and still refuse to listen when you tell them what hurts.
That is not necessarily evidence that there is no love.
It may be evidence that love alone is not enough.
I understand the temptation to keep asking whether someone loves you.
It is often an easier question than asking what their love is doing to you.
One question keeps hope alive.
The other may require you to admit something you do not want to admit.
I have written a book about questions like these not because I have all the answers, but because I have watched how easily we can ask the wrong question for years.
Including myself.
We ask:
Do they love me?
Sometimes they do.
And sometimes that is not the answer that decides anything.
We hate that because it removes the fantasy that love is the final authority.
It isn't.
In some cases love is present and the relationship still needs to end.
At times you love someone and leave.
In certain situations you believe their love is real and still decide you cannot live inside the way they express it.
That is not a contradiction.
It is adulthood.
You can love someone and say:
“I am not staying.”
You can love someone and say:
“This hurts me too much.”
You can love someone and say:
“I believe you love me. I also believe this relationship is destroying something in me.”
Those sentences sound cruel only if we believe love creates an obligation to remain.
It doesn't.
And then there is the phrase that sounds almost sacred:
“I love you unconditionally.”
I understand why people want to hear it.
But love does not erase consequences.
Does unconditional love mean:
Nothing you do can make me stop feeling love for you?
Perhaps.
But it cannot reasonably mean:
Nothing you do can make me leave.
Those are different promises.
You can love someone and still have boundaries.
You can love someone and refuse access to you.
You can love someone and stop trusting them.
You can love someone and decide that being close to them is no longer good for you.
Sometimes leaving is not proof that the love was weak.
Sometimes it is proof that something else became stronger:
self-respect.
But there is another problem with “I love you.”
Sometimes the sentence is not only an expression of love.
Sometimes it is also an attempt to get something.
Reassurance.
Forgiveness.
Sex.
Closeness.
Another chance.
The prevention of abandonment.
A return to normal after a fight.
That does not automatically make the speaker manipulative.
People are complicated.
We rarely speak from one motive.
But we should stop pretending that beautiful words are psychologically neutral.
“I love you” can soothe someone.
It can bind someone.
It can make someone stay.
It can make someone forgive.
It can make someone reinterpret behavior they would otherwise recognize as unacceptable.
That is why the sentence has power.
And that is why we should sometimes take the words away.
Imagine the person could never say “I love you” again.
No flowers.
No speeches.
No promises.
No dramatic apologies.
No perfect messages at two in the morning.
Nothing verbal.
What would remain?
How do they behave when you are inconvenient?
How do they behave when you disagree?
How do they behave when you say no?
How do they behave when you are not giving them what they want?
How do they behave when you are vulnerable?
How do they behave when nobody is watching?
How do they behave when loving you costs them something?
That is where the sentence gets tested.
Not because actions are magically more truthful than words.
Words are actions too.
Saying “I love you” does something.
It creates expectations.
It creates attachment.
It can make another person feel safe.
It can also make another person stay when they should leave.
So the question is not whether words matter.
They do.
The question is whether the words are supported by the rest of the relationship.
Because love without honesty can become deception.
Love without respect can become possession.
Love without boundaries can become dependency.
Love without responsibility can become an excuse.
Love without the freedom to be yourself can become a cage that happens to feel warm.
And yet I do not want to end with the cynical conclusion that “I love you” means nothing.
That would be easy.
And it would be bullshit.
Now and then those four words are among the truest words another human being can give you.
There are times someone says them without strategy, without manipulation, without wanting anything in return.
Sometimes they mean:
I see you.
I want you here.
Your existence matters to me.
I care what happens to you.
I am willing to know you as you actually are, not merely as I want you to be.
That kind of love exists.
But even then, love does not make two people compatible.
It does not make someone emotionally mature.
It does not erase old wounds.
It does not teach communication.
It does not remove selfishness.
It does not make two people want the same life.
It does not make a person capable of giving what they sincerely wish they could give.
Sometimes the most painful truth in a relationship is not:
“They never loved me.”
It is:
“They did love me. It still wasn't enough.”
That sentence hurts because there is nowhere to put the blame.
There is no villain.
No fraud.
No secret explanation that makes the whole thing easier.
Just two people, perhaps loving each other, and still unable to make the relationship work.
And maybe that is why we ask whether someone loves us so obsessively.
Because the answer feels like it should settle everything.
It doesn't.
The more difficult questions are the ones that come after it.
Do they respect you?
Do they tell you the truth?
Do they make room for your reality?
Can you become more yourself beside them?
Can they tolerate your boundaries?
Can you tolerate theirs?
Can the two of you repair what you damage?
Can you remain separate people without turning separation into abandonment?
Can love survive disappointment without becoming punishment?
Those questions are less romantic.
They are also more useful.
So the next time someone says,
“I love you,”
you do not have to distrust them.
You do not have to interrogate the sentence.
You do not have to become cynical.
Listen.
Let yourself feel what it means to be loved.
But do not make the mistake of asking four words to answer questions they were never capable of answering.
Because someone can love you.
And still not be good for you.
And sometimes, the hardest thing you will ever accept is this:
You can believe that someone loves you and still know you cannot stay.
Love may explain why you stayed. It does not always explain why you should.
© Samibsoul.com 2026