Date: Monday, February 23, 2026
Subject: What's luv, and how do we know we've found it?
To: Not Relationship Advice from Raquel's Substack <reply+34bymb&4yztvz&&0be7e73ed0f514ddf72cc849bcca9514cf4b65ec5b45585d0a36e53370f80de8@mg1.substack.com>
On Saturday, February 21, 2026, Not Relationship Advice from Raquel's Substack <raqisright@substack.com> wrote:
What's luv, and how do we know we've found it?
If being crazy in love was right, was being stable in love wrong?
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Fat Joe posed the question: What's Luv,
Beyonce taught us what it was to be Crazy in Love,
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Bon Jovi said that We Give Love a Bad Name
Pat Benatar said Love is a Battlefield.
New York City women have the same question. Was love supposed to be hard? Easy? Inane?
All women want is to feel special, feel superior and hear that four letter word.
Because it's not just a word - but a life.
Love is someone to call to share wonderful news with. Love is a person you call when you're in trouble.
But is love always worth the risk? Does love really conquer all?
The first time I told him I loved him, I didn't believe the words as they were coming out of my mouth.
Was it love or was it an insatiable desire to prove that I was capable of being loved. Because all women really want is to feel special right?
They say that love is the way a person makes you feel.
Are you happy with them? On eggshells? Choosing your next words wisely out of fear of failure or saying the wrong thing?
It was with this man that an argument and rupture in that love was always a word away. One wrong word, a slip of the tongue and my love would be pulled out from under me. One wrong word and he would take his love away.
But is love really possible if it can be taken back with the slip of a word.
Could love be returned?
If I told him stories or past lives and loves, he would take the word away again. Punishment was not love, and his love was a refundable fare.
Because with this love, love itself could always be repealed, repressed or worse: replaced.
But that's not love, love is the irreplaceable. Love is not the temporary but the forever.
Did I love him or did I just love being loved?
At the end of the day: I was just a girl, yearning to be loved. But at what cost?
Jlo said Love Don't Cost a Thing, but she was wrong. In this case: love cost me my voice. The eggshells I walked on throughout the course of this love was not a yellow brick road to the emerald city, but a gravel path to an isolated cottage.
This love cost me my friends, my sense of self, and saying goodbye to my old life.
Because it wasn't love that brought me to that isolated town: it was the fear of having no love at all.
The paradox of life is that of love. You cannot live without love, and love cannot exist without your own life, your own identity.
I yearn for a simple definition, a roadmap on how to love. But once again, I'm left at a fork in the road. Is love the stable man? Or is love the crazy? The type that could put you in a mental hospital.
If being crazy in love was right, was being stable in love wrong?
Is to love to stand up for oneself, or stand down. I've never known a peaceful love. I've never known a stable love. I've just known lust.
All a woman wants is to be loved.
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