On Being Loved Gently

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I used to think nice men were forgettable.

The kind you meet when you are younger and too busy mistaking chaos for chemistry. The kind whose calls you don’t return because something about their gentleness feels… insufficient. Soft men felt like shadows beside the blazing silhouettes of the ones who hurt loud and loved selfishly.

I told myself I liked dangerous men because they were exciting.

Truth is, I liked them because they were familiar.

Then I met him.

He did nothing spectacular the way broken men do. No dramatic confessions. No wild unpredictability. No grand gestures that hide small intentions. He didn’t perform intensity; he practiced presence.

He cooked for me.

Not the kind of cooking that impresses. The kind that feeds. The kind that says, stay. The kind that does not rush you into gratitude.

He looked at me without undressing me in his eyes.

And somehow, that felt more intimate than lust ever had.

When we were together, my body did not prepare for abandonment. My mind did not rehearse disappointment. There was no need to become interesting to be kept. I was already enough without auditioning.

He was gentle in ways I did not know how to receive.

And when we became intimate, for the first time in my life, I did not feel used.

I felt chosen.

Not in the way men choose women as mirrors for their hunger. But with certain agency; I wanted him. I went to him. I said yes without bargaining with myself.

I left that day feeling… clean.

Not holy. Not healed. Just… un-bruised. Un-used. Un-drained.

And that’s when the panic came.

Not because he hurt me,
but because he didn’t.

My body could not recognize safety as desire. My chest tightened in confusion. My instincts whispered, something is wrong. Run. Retreat. Withdraw.

My therapist once called it “avoidant activation.”

I call it grief disguised as fear.

Because when your past has trained you to love men who leave, kindness feels like a threat. When your blueprint is built on abandonment, consistency feels suffocating. When your heart was taught to mistake volatility for voltage, peace reads as disinterest.

He had a softness that scared me.

Not weakness.

Depth.

He wasn’t loud. He was attentive.
He wasn’t dominating. He was deliberate.
He wasn’t cold. He was calm.

I realize now how many men I loved because they would never love me back.

It felt safer to chase affection that could not stay.

This man stayed.

And something in me did not know what to do with that.

He would ask nothing of me and I would panic.
He would offer tenderness and my instincts would search for the cost.
He would talk of tomorrow and my body would look for exits.

It is easier to survive longing than to survive closeness.

It is easier to ache than to receive.

There is a strange shame that comes with being cared for when you’ve been starved.

A voice in my head kept asking,
what if you hurt him?
what if you waste him?
what if you are not enough for this kind of good?

And that voice did not belong to logic,
it belonged to the past.

That voice was raised by men who loved recklessly and left clean.

So I sat with my fear.

Not to conquer it.
Just to listen.

And what it said beneath the noise was this:

I am not afraid of him.

I am afraid of what happens if I let him matter.

I am afraid of the day softness stops feeling awkward and starts feeling like home.

I don’t know what we are yet.

But I know this:
something in me has begun to loosen.
Something in me has stopped bracing.
Something in me is quietly learning that love does not have to arrive with wreckage.

Not all desire needs to leave you empty-handed.
Not all men will haunt you.
Not all affection comes with eviction notices.

Some men cook.

Some men stay.

Some men touch you like you are not temporary.

And when they do,
it changes the way you begin to remember yourself.