How to Identify Your Love Beliefs: Understanding What Shaped Your Relationships (And How to Break Free)
Here's a question that might make you pause mid-scroll: What if the way you love and expect to be loved isn't actually yours?
What if it's a patchwork quilt stitched together from Disney endings, your parents' silent dinners, that one ex who always remembered your coffee order, and every rom-com that promised you'd "just know" when it's right?
We spend so much time curating our idea of love from external sources—Love Island marathons, relationship goals on Instagram, the couple at brunch who seems to have it all figured out. But we rarely stop to ask: Where did my blueprint for love come from?
The Love You Learned Before You Knew You Were Learning
Your earliest experiences of love weren't theoretical. They were lived. They were in the way your parents did or didn't hold hands. The way they celebrated you—or didn't. The quality time that was abundant or absent. The words spoken or swallowed.
These moments didn't just happen to you. They taught you what love looks like, sounds like, feels like. And here's the thing: you didn't get to choose those lessons. But you do get to decide whether they continue to write your story.
So let's do the work. Let's gently excavate the beliefs about love planted in you before you had the language to question them.
The Questions That Reveal Your Love Blueprint
Start with what you witnessed: How did your parents or caregivers love each other? Did they touch? Compliment? Spend intentional time together? Or was love something implied but never shown? This is your first reference point—the love you saw modeled.
Then ask what you received: How did they love you? Were you celebrated? Held? Told you were enough? Or did love feel conditional, quiet, or absent? This is where you learned what it feels like to be loved—or what it feels like to long for it.
Notice what you give: How do you show love now? Are you the planner, the gift-giver, the hype friend, the one who always makes time? What you offer others often mirrors what you wished you'd received—or what you did receive and now consider sacred.
Examine your love language: This one's important. Your top love language might not be random. Mine is quality time—because I grew up craving it. Ask yourself: Is my love language what I lacked, or what I was given and can't imagine living without?
Challenge the fantasy: What did movies, books, and stories teach you love should look like? That perfect, effortless, fireworks-and-fate kind of love? Now ask: How much of my disappointment in real love comes from chasing a fiction?
What to Do With What You Find
This isn't about blaming your parents or rewriting your childhood. It's about awareness. It's about recognizing that the love beliefs you hold might not serve the relationship you're trying to build—with yourself or with someone else.
Here's what you can try:
Journal it: Write about one early memory of love—witnessing or receiving it. What did that moment teach you? Is that belief still true for you today?
Name your non-negotiables: Based on what you've learned about yourself, what must love include for you to feel seen and safe? Not what Instagram says—what you say.
Talk about it: Share this work with your partner if you're in a relationship. Ask them the same questions. Build a love language together that honors both of your histories without being controlled by them.
The Permission You've Been Waiting For
You don't have to love the way you were taught to love. You don't have to recreate your parents' relationship, chase the fairy tale, or settle for the version of love that feels familiar but hollow.
You get to choose. You get to honor your origins and decide where you're going. You get to build a love—with yourself first, and maybe with someone else—that feels true, whole, and yours.
That's the work. That's the becoming. And it starts with one honest question: What did I learn about love, and is it still serving me?
Want to know where you are in your relationship with yourself? Take my free assessment here.
