We belt it out and call it romantic. Listen closely and it's a song about anxiety.
There's a song you've probably sung at full volume in the car. The one about calling someone late at night, a little drunk, aching, reaching out for him after swearing you wouldn't.
We call it romantic. We sway to that kind of song and sigh.
Listen to what it's actually describing, though. A woman up past one in the morning, gripped by a need she can't sit with, doing the exact thing she promised herself she wouldn't.
We've been taught to call that longing "deep love." A lot of the time it's wearing a costume.
The ache we mistake for love
Our whole culture romanticizes the ache. The can't-eat, can't-sleep, can't-stop-checking-your-phone feeling gets sold as the height of passion.
For a lot of women, that ache is really anxiety wearing love's clothes.
It shows up strongest with the men who are least available, because uncertainty is the fuel. The less sure you are of him, the more intense the "love" feels, and the intensity gets mistaken for depth.
What secure love actually feels like
Real, secure love is quieter. To a nervous system used to chaos, it can even feel boring at first.
Your shoulders come down. You stop refreshing the thread. You enjoy your day and still look forward to him, without the gnawing in your stomach.
That calm is what love feels like once fear stops running the show.
Why this quietly runs your life
If the only time you feel "in love" is when you're anxious, you'll keep choosing men who keep you guessing and calling the panic chemistry.
And you'll keep walking past the steady, available men, because they don't spike the anxiety, so you read them as "no spark."
The whole pattern quietly steers you toward the exact men who can't give you peace.
How to start trusting the calm
The good news is that a trained nervous system can be retrained, and it's simpler than it sounds.
Start by noticing the difference in your body. Anxiety lives high and fast, a clench in the chest, a buzz, a need to do something right now. Calm lives lower and slower, in steady breath and dropped shoulders.
When you meet a steady, available man, expect the calm to feel like nothing at first. That flatness is not a verdict. It's your system idling for once instead of racing.
Give it more than one date. Anxiety fades fast, so a man who doesn't spike it can seem dull in week one and quietly grow on you by week four, if you let him.
The good men your anxiety skips right past
Here's the quiet cost of the pattern. While you're chasing the ones who keep you guessing, the steady, kind, available men are walking right past your radar.
They don't set off fireworks, so you file them under "no chemistry" and move on, often back toward someone who hurts.
Those are frequently the exact men who would treat you well for thirty years. Your anxiety just can't see them, because they never make it loud enough to register.
Learning to feel the calm is how you finally start seeing them, and choosing one.
What changes when you trust the calm
When you finally let a steady man stay long enough, something quietly shifts in you.
The flat feeling fades. The calm stops reading as boring and starts reading as safe, then as something you'd fight to keep.
You sleep better. You stop performing and start relaxing. One day you notice you haven't cried over a man in months, and you can barely remember the constant ache that used to feel like love.
That quiet you feel is simply what love is like when it isn't also hurting you. Give it long enough, and the anxious kind starts to look exhausting from the outside, and you wonder how you ever called it romance.
If you always fall for the ones who keep you guessing
Maybe every man who ever gave you butterflies also gave you knots. Maybe the calm ones bored you a little.
That pattern is a nervous system trained to read anxiety as love, and a trained nervous system can be retrained.
There's a way to shift it, so a steady man starts to feel like relief instead of boredom, and the guessing games slowly lose their grip on you.
There's a way to feel secure with a man instead of anxious, so the calm, available ones finally feel like the prize they are, and the ones who keep you guessing lose their pull.
The next time that song comes on, enjoy it. Just don't take dating advice from it.
The one-in-the-morning ache makes a gorgeous chorus and a painful relationship.
Talk soon,
Matthew Coast
P.S. Here's a quiet test. If a man only feels exciting when you're unsure of him, that's not chemistry talking. That's your anxiety, and it has terrible taste in men. Here's how to retrain it.