A real relationship moment, and the unseen difference in how we experience love, even when everything is secure.
A client sat down and shared this:
“We haven’t spoken in almost two weeks. No messages. Nothing. And I started to feel like the connection was disappearing. My friends were saying ‘she is just not that into me’ and I started to believe them.”
But when we finally talked, she was warm, calm, loving.
For her, nothing had changed.
But for me, it had.”
This wasn’t about conflict. There was no argument, no distance emotionally, no disconnection in the relationship.
This was something else.
Something I see in secure relationships again and again:
Two people can love each other completely and still feel that love in fundamentally different ways.
The Invisible Divide:
How You Feel Because of the Other vs. How You Feel About the Other
We often talk about love like it’s one shared experience.
But even when love is mutual, we don’t always feel it the same way.
There are two quiet orientations I see even in emotionally very secure people:
1. The self-responsive experience:
“I feel in love because of what you bring out in me.”
– You feel the love most when there’s presence, energy, shared space.
– A text, a voice note, a moment of shared laughter brings the feeling to life again.
– Without that, the feeling fades, not because the love is gone, but because it’s not actively felt.
These people tend to pull away and enhance distance when the partner doesn’t ‘fuel the flame’.
2. The other-responsive experience:
“I feel in love because of what I hold for you.”
– The love lives inside, even when you’re not interacting.
– Silence doesn’t diminish it. The connection is a constant.
– This person may not reach out often, not because they don’t feel love, but because they don’t need reminders to feel it.
Both are valid. Both are secure.
But they create different inner landscapes.
This Isn’t About Attachment Styles
These dynamics show up even in emotionally healthy, securely attached relationships.
No one is anxious. No one is avoidant.
There’s no testing, chasing, withdrawing.
Just two people whose internal experience of love runs on different timelines and through different channels.
One partner feels connected when love is exchanged.
The other feels connected even when love is quiet.
Why It Feels So Misaligned, Even When It Isn’t
The person who feels through presence might wonder:
“Why haven’t I heard from her? Has the feeling changed?”
The one who feels through constancy might wonder:
“Why would I need to text? I think about you all the time and I’ve told you that.”
The danger is misreading silence as absence or lack of love.
But for some people, silence is not a gap, it’s just the normal terrain of deep emotional holding.
When this difference goes unnamed, it creates subtle disconnection.
When it’s named, it creates space for real intimacy.
What I Tell Clients
You don’t need to fix this. You just need to see it clearly.
Instead of:
“If she really loved me, she’d message me.”
Try:
“She loves me in a way that doesn’t require constant contact. I love through interaction. We experience the same bond in different ways.”
This understanding shifts everything.
No more second-guessing.
No more pulling away to protect yourself from misinterpreted silence.
Just curiosity about how the other holds love, and clarity about how you do. And create a way that works for both.
A Final Thought
We always assume love is something we do together.
But part of the work is learning how the other person does love alone.
And when we stop assuming that absence of action means absence of feeling, we start seeing the quiet, steady presence that might have been there all along.
If you’re in a secure relationship but feeling this invisible emotional mismatch, this is the kind of nuance I work with in coaching.
It’s not about who’s right. It’s about learning how love lives inside both of you, and building the bridge that lets you meet in the middle.
>> Of course there are many who are asking ‘Is she/he feeling the same way?’ and this is a topic that is not measured in amount of messages or meetings. We all know the ‘love bombers’ who go from one to the next. In my experience the only way to know how someone feels is ‘just ask’. And ghosting is of course never a sign of empathy.