Circle of Candor | I Love You Series — Part 2

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I’ve learned that people who hesitate with ‘I love you’ usually aren’t lacking the feeling. The words just carry weight for them — the kind of weight that comes from a past where expressing love didn’t feel safe or welcomed.

Some people struggle to get those words out, not because they lack love, but because they never saw vulnerability practiced in the place that raised them. They grew up in environments where softness had a cost, where emotions had to be managed quietly, and where affection showed up inconsistently — offered one moment and withheld the next.

Growing up in a home where ‘I love you’ wasn’t spoken, or didn’t feel real, leaves a mark. Your body learns to protect itself before it ever thinks about softening. You start holding back emotions you actually want to express, not because you don’t feel them, but because the habit of staying guarded became second nature.

I’ve watched how that kind of childhood shapes adults who want to love fully yet struggle to let the words out. Their nervous system carries memories their mind tries to outgrow — memories that taught them vulnerability was risky, that openness invited criticism, and that love could be followed by consequences.

Some of us grew up in survival homes — places where emotions had to be controlled to stay safe.
In those homes, silence was protection.
Distance was normal.
And love, if present, was implied more than spoken.

So when these adults try to say ‘I love you,’ even to someone they genuinely care for, the words don’t come easily. There’s a hesitation that shows up before the sentence, a moment where their whole body remembers how unsafe it once felt to be open.

What I’ve learned is this: people who struggle with those words aren’t unfeeling — they’re careful. They’re holding old experiences in their throat, trying to do something their childhood never supported. The love is there; the fear is what keeps it from coming out. No one ever taught them that being transparent with their feelings could exist without consequence.

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WHY VULNERABILITY FEELS DANGEROUS

I’ve learned that vulnerability isn’t hard because we’re weak —
it’s hard because, for many of us, being open used to come with a price.

Saying “I love you” exposes something real.
Not just emotion…
but the part of us we spent years trying to protect.

When you say those words, you’re not just speaking affection —
you’re showing the softest place inside you.
And for people who were conditioned to guard themselves,
softness feels like the most dangerous thing in the room.

Letting yourself be seen can bring up a lot — the worry that someone might turn away from you, misunderstand you, or take advantage of how deeply you care. When you grow up in a home where emotions weren’t safe, you learn to stay guarded. You choose your words carefully and keep your heart tucked behind whatever made you feel protected — logic, control, silence, anything that kept you from being exposed.

So now, as an adult, even when you care for someone deeply, your body reacts before your words do. It holds old memories — the chaos that followed honesty, the way softness once made you feel exposed, the consequences that came with being open.

When you’ve spent years navigating life in survival mode, even the simplest expression of love can feel unsteady, like you’re stepping out without anything solid beneath you.

The feeling itself isn’t the problem. The challenge is that vulnerability still registers as risk, even in moments where nothing is actually threatening you.

That’s the part people often miss: many of us aren’t avoiding love — we’re trying to figure out how to show it without losing ourselves in the process.

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CHILDHOOD BLUEPRINT: WHAT WE WERE SHOWN (OR NEVER SHOWN)

I’ve realized that the way we struggle with love as adults rarely begins in adulthood.
Most of it starts in the rooms we grew up in — long before we ever understood what love was supposed to feel like.

Some of us grew up in homes where love was scarce.
Not because our caregivers didn’t care, but because they didn’t know how to express it.
Silence was the norm.
Affection was awkward.
Everyone moved through the house doing what needed to be done,
and feelings were something you handled alone.

Some people were raised in homes where love depended on performance. Affection came with expectations, and approval only showed up when you behaved in ways that kept everyone else comfortable. In those environments, ‘I love you’ wasn’t a steady truth — it was something you had to work for, something handed out when you met someone’s standards instead of simply being yourself.

There were also homes where saying “I love you” meant nothing.
It was spoken loosely, casually, without responsibility.
The words were there, but the actions never matched.
And when love is overpromised and under-delivered,
you learn to mistrust the phrase itself.

There are also people who grew up in homes where ‘I love you’ carried a different kind of weight — a phrase that only showed up after the damage was done. It became the apology no one knew how to say, the reset button after conflict, the thing that patched over harm without addressing it.

Those early experiences become templates. They shape what we expect from love, how we show it, and how we guard ourselves inside of it.

When love was quiet in your childhood, you learned to silence parts of yourself. When it depended on meeting someone’s expectations, you learned to perform steadiness even when your insides were anything but. When it showed up inconsistently, you learned to stay protected. And when it followed chaos, you learned to associate affection with instability instead of safety.

And now, as adults, many of us are still moving through relationships with those childhood scripts running in the background.
Not because we want to —
but because no one ever showed us another way to be.

When you grow up without clear emotional models,
“I love you” becomes a phrase you have to re-learn,
not a phrase you naturally know how to live inside.

Our childhoods don’t decide the rest of our lives,
but they absolutely explain the patterns we’re trying to untangle today.

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SURVIVAL HOMES AND EMOTIONAL SILENCE

What I’ve come to understand is that being raised in a survival home changes how you show up in love. You feel everything — sometimes more than people realize — but the way you express it gets shaped by what kept you safe growing up. Survival teaches you to prioritize protection over softness, so tenderness doesn’t come naturally. It’s not because you’re closed off; it’s because caution became the default.

In survival-mode households, emotions are a luxury no one believes they can afford.
People are too busy holding the walls up, keeping the peace, managing crisis, or trying to stay one step ahead of whatever comes next.
In homes like that, love becomes something you sense, not something you hear.

In those environments, you end up relying more on tone than on actual words. Affection becomes something you sense rather than something that’s spoken out loud. Over time, that emotional quiet turns into the atmosphere you grow up in — something you accept without even realizing you adapted to it.

In these homes, love is often unspoken because everyone is focused on getting through the day.
Love is implied through chores, responsibilities, routines.
It’s avoided because vulnerability slows things down.
And sometimes, it’s withheld entirely because no one in that house learned how to hold softness without dropping it.

When a household is built around survival, softness stops feeling useful. In that kind of environment, saying ‘I love you’ isn’t a natural part of the culture because everyone is focused on staying alert, staying steady, and staying prepared. Affection doesn’t disappear — it just gets pushed aside by the constant need to manage whatever feels threatening.

Growing up in that kind of environment teaches your body a simple lesson: ‘I love you’ isn’t part of what you need to get through the day. After a while, you adjust to that reality. You don’t look for the words, and you don’t shape your voice around them, because survival became the priority long before openness ever had a chance.

That kind of conditioning doesn’t disappear just because you grow up. Even in healthier relationships, a part of you stays cautious. You convince yourself that being open might expose you in ways you’re not prepared for, because childhood taught you that emotional honesty came with consequences.

When survival mode is the only template you’ve had, love starts to feel like something you express quietly. You show it through what you do, not through what you say, because speaking it out loud still feels unfamiliar — almost like unlocking a door you were taught to keep guarded.

The depth is there. The hesitation comes from the past, not from a lack of feeling.

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THE BODY REMEMBERS

Something I’ve learned over time is that the body reacts to love long before the mind can make sense of it. You might want to express how you feel, or even start to form the words, but if your nervous system grew up seeing vulnerability as a threat, your body steps in first.

Some people shut down or go still when love comes toward them, not because they don’t care, but because a younger version of them remembers what openness once cost.

Some people choke on the words.
Their throat tightens, their breath changes, the phrase gets stuck
somewhere between the heart and the mouth.
That’s not avoidance —
that’s a trauma response.

There are people who hold the words in until the moment slips away. It’s not hesitation from lack of feeling — their body just needs a little more safety before it can let the truth come forward.

Growing up in survival mode trains the body to stay alert instead of open. Affection doesn’t feel predictable, and closeness doesn’t automatically register as safe. Vulnerability becomes something your system treats carefully, because past experiences taught you that letting your guard down could cost you.

So when love finally shows up — real, steady, gentle love —
the body doesn’t know what to do with it.

When you’ve lived most of your life in survival mode, your body reacts fast — sometimes faster than you can understand. You might feel yourself pulling back, getting emotional, or wanting to shut down even when a part of you wants to move closer. That isn’t weakness, and it isn’t overreacting. It’s your system trying to protect you with the same strategies it had to rely on when you were growing up.

What people forget is that the body doesn’t only hold on to the hard moments — it also remembers when something finally feels safe. It happens slowly, almost quietly, but the shift is real.

Every time you let yourself receive a kind of love you aren’t familiar with, your body notices. It starts building new associations, new memories of being met gently instead of defensively.

Over time, the reactions that once felt automatic begin to settle. You’re not suddenly fearless, but your system starts to trust that not every closeness is a threat.

That’s when love stops feeling dangerous and starts becoming something you can actually lean into.

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THE MISUNDERSTOOD “COLD PERSON”

I’ve realized that many people who come across as distant are actually carrying a lot more emotion than they let on. They just express it differently. Softness doesn’t come easily, and reaching out first feels risky to them. Even saying ‘I love you’ becomes something they think through carefully, not because they lack feeling, but because they’re aware of what that level of openness might reveal.

From the outside, people like this can seem disconnected, almost uninterested. But when you really pay attention, you start to notice something else underneath it. It isn’t that they don’t care — it’s that they’re cautious. What looks like distance is often someone managing their fear of being exposed or misunderstood. They hold themselves together so tightly that it can read as emotional absence, when in reality it’s self-protection.

People who move this way didn’t grow up learning that expressing love was safe. What they did learn was how to protect themselves. Opening up once cost them something, so vulnerability became tied to losing control or feeling exposed. So when someone approaches them with genuine warmth, their first instinct isn’t to receive it — it’s to assess whether their safety is at risk.

This is why people labeled as cold are so often misread. It isn’t a lack of depth — it’s that their deepest feelings are tucked behind defenses they never learned how to put down.

But here’s the nuance — the part most people avoid:

Understanding the fear behind someone’s distance
doesn’t excuse the harm their distance creates.

Compassion matters.
But compassion without boundaries becomes self-abandonment.

It’s possible to understand why someone struggles with expression and still protect your own need for emotional truth.

Compassion doesn’t require abandoning accountability.

Seeing the wounds that shaped a person doesn’t mean you have to shrink your boundaries to match them.

Because fear explains behavior —
but it never justifies hurting people who are trying to love you.

A person who seems “cold” often isn’t lacking a heart — they’re carrying hesitation.

They weren’t given the tools, the language, or the safety to express what they feel, so everything comes out cautious.

Their pace is slower, their openings are smaller, and most days they’re simply trying to move through connection without overwhelming their own system.

But love is not meant to live only in someone’s intentions.
At some point, it has to live in their actions.

Compassion invites understanding.
Boundaries invite growth.

Both are necessary.
And both are love.

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RELEARNING HOW TO SAY IT

I’ve learned that healing has its own timing.

You can’t rush your body into openness or treat vulnerability like something you can power through.

The nervous system doesn’t bend to pressure.

The heart doesn’t open on command.

And your voice won’t loosen just because someone else hopes it will.

Healing begins with feeling safe in your own body —
not imagined safety, not “I should be fine by now,”
but the kind of ease your system doesn’t question.

Before “I love you” can move freely,
you have to tend to the parts of you that once learned it came with risk.
Those pieces need reassurance before they can release the brace they’ve held for years.

For many people, the first step isn’t saying “I love you.”

It begins with recognizing what’s unfolding inside them long before the words appear.

A warmth they didn’t expect.

A pull they can’t ignore.

A feeling that tells the truth before their voice does.

Before they can express anything out loud, they often have to understand it privately —

without pressure, without an audience, without rushing themselves.

That’s emotional literacy.
Naming love in new ways before speaking it in old ones.

“I care about you.”
“I appreciate your presence.”
“I feel safe with you.”
“I want to be here.”
These are all forms of love,
even if they don’t use the exact phrase that was once too heavy to hold.

Relearning how to say “I love you” isn’t about reciting the words
—it’s about repairing the pipeline between the heart and the mouth.
The part of you that feels
must learn to trust
the part of you that speaks.

And that part of healing moves at a human pace.
It grows in the presence of people who stay steady, not unpredictable.
Little by little, your body starts picking up on cues it didn’t have before — signs that the moment won’t turn on you.
You begin to sense that you aren’t being tested.
You notice that warmth isn’t a trap.
You realize you’re not bracing for loss every time you soften.

When those truths settle — even a little — the words find room to move.
They come with some hesitancy, shaped by what came before, but they finally come from a place that’s honest.

Because healing doesn’t make you fearless.
It makes you brave enough to speak even with the fear still present.

That’s what relearning love looks like.
Not forcing the phrase,
but allowing it to rise naturally
once the heart finally believes it’s safe to be heard.

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GENTLE CHALLENGE TO THE READER

I want to offer you a question — not to judge you, not to push you,
but to open a quiet door inside yourself.

When you avoid saying “I love you,”
is it because the feeling isn’t there…
or because you were taught it wasn’t safe to let it out?

Sometimes we tell ourselves we’re “not ready,”
or “not that kind of person,”
or “not emotional like that,”
but underneath those explanations
is usually a story we didn’t write —
it’s the one we inherited.

So ask yourself gently:

Do you hold back love because you’re unsure of it…
or because you’re unsure of what will happen once it’s spoken?

When someone else says the phrase to you,
do you tense up because you don’t want it…
or because you don’t trust it?

When you feel affection rising in your chest,
do you silence it because it doesn’t feel real…
or because your body is still trying to protect you
from a danger that isn’t present anymore?

These questions aren’t meant to corner you.
They’re meant to guide you.
To help you see the difference between who you are now
and who you had to be back then.

Because healing isn’t just about learning how to say “I love you.”
It’s about noticing every place inside you
where love still feels like a threat.

Sit with that for a moment —
not to shame yourself,
but to understand yourself more honestly.

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CLOSING NOTE

If there’s one thing I hope this part of the series leaves with you,
it’s that the fear of saying “I love you” doesn’t make you broken.
It makes you honest.

A lot of people grew up in environments where those three words didn’t signal comfort.

For others, expressing what they felt was never treated as something they had permission to do.

And many learned to build such strong internal armor that genuine care feels foreign, even when it’s safe.

The capacity to speak love out loud doesn’t disappear.

It doesn’t vanish with childhood or trauma.

It simply needs space to be rebuilt — slowly, safely, in real time with real people.

You can’t rebuild this part of yourself by pushing harder or pretending you’re unaffected.
Your body remembers what shaped it, and it deserves to be heard, not overridden.

Learning to express love again grows from honesty —
the kind where you admit what molded you,
where you let the people in your life see the effort you’re making,
and where you stay truthful about the parts of you still learning how to open.

And it happens through responsibility —
the responsibility to listen to your own nervous system
and to move slowly enough that the fear doesn’t become the one steering your life.

This series isn’t about blaming the past.
It’s about understanding how it still lives in us
and choosing, little by little,
to move differently than we were taught.

Part 3 opens a different angle of the conversation —
a look at how those three words stretch, shrink, or shift depending on the spaces we come from and the meanings we’ve attached to them.
Our relationship with “I love you” keeps evolving as we do, and that next chapter will move us further into that truth.

For now, let this settle quietly inside you:
There’s nothing broken in the way you love.
You’re simply moving out of patterns that once protected you.
And that shift — that slow release of survival — is what creates room for something honest to grow.