Porch Light Love

I've been doing some writing on Substack as Therabarb, but this one seemed like a good one for a crosspost. https://open.substack.com/pub/therabarb/p/i-believe-love-will-save-us-all-also?r=1pavyn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

I Believe Love Will Save Us All. Also? I Hate Valentine’s Day.

Love Isn’t Loud, It’s a Porch Light

I want to be very clear up front: I am not anti-love.

I am, in fact, aggressively pro-love. 

I believe love is transformative. I believe it is the only thing that makes any of this worth it. I believe love is in the details—the small kindnesses, the noticing, the way someone brings you coffee without asking. The way you can exhale in the presence of someone safe.

I believe love is the closest thing we have to salvation.

And I still detest Valentine’s Day.

Maybe that’s confusing. It’s like being someone who loves music but cannot stand the sound of a kazoo (true.) Technically the same category, emotionally a completely different experience.

Valentine’s Day is love’s most overcaffeinated spokesperson. It’s love wearing sequins, shouting through a megaphone, demanding a performance.

That is not the kind of love I trust.

Because in my experience, real love is rarely loud.

Real love is usually quiet. Almost boring, in the best way. Real love looks like someone sitting with you in grief without trying to fix it. It looks like remembering how you take your tea, or apologizing without defending. Real love is choosing each other again on some random Tuesday when nobody is watching.

Which is why Valentine’s Day makes me feel like I’m being asked to deliver love in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. Like I’m supposed to stand up and offer bullet points from the Universe’s Most Reluctant Valentine.

No, thank you.

Valentine’s Day love, as it’s marketed, looks like a $14 card that says “I’d be lost without you,” paired with a dinner reservation made under duress. It’s the cultural suggestion that if romance isn’t being expressed in red and pink, it may not exist at all. It’s love as a scoreboard.

And I don’t think love was ever meant to be a scoreboard.

Honestly, Valentine’s Day feels like capitalism found love and said, “Cute. Let’s monetize that.” Kind of impressive, when you think about it —our relentless commercialization of every single loving impulse. Capitalism is constantly wondering about the opportunity for merch sales.

Because now we have an entire holiday where the subtext is: Prove you are loved. Publicly. With props.

And that’s a lot of pressure to put on something as tender and complicated as human connection.

The irony is that the greatest Valentine I ever got wasn’t a purchase at all.

It wasn’t roses. It wasn’t jewelry. It wasn’t even a card purchased in a store with a designated Valentine’s Day aisle.

It was a random piece of paper.

My partner found it in his car—just some scrap that happened to be there—and he wrote me a sweet note. Nothing performative. Nothing polished. Just love, in ink, in the middle of ordinary life.

And then he left it under my windshield for me to find.

That is it. That is the whole thing.

That note did more for my heart than any overpriced prix fixe menu ever could, because it wasn’t about meeting an expectation. It was about noticing. It was about tenderness. It was love showing up quietly, without an audience.

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe love doesn’t wield a hammer. Maybe it’s softer than that. Maybe it’s the noticing of the quiet sigh, and a gentle questioning of it. The pause. The care. The willingness to ask, “Are you okay?” and to actually stay for the answer.

Maybe love is more like a porch light than a spotlight. Not blinding, not performative, not demanding applause.

Just steady.

Just on.

Loyal love seems to show up in ordinary places. It’s not especially interested in spectacle. It doesn’t need a holiday or an audience or proof. It’s the love that remembers small things, the love that notices, the love that comes back. Isn’t that what most of us want, underneath all the noise? Not intensity, necessarily, but steadiness. Not someone who dazzles, but someone who returns.

I think about Tuesday love.

Not anniversary love. Not Valentine’s Day love. Not “post it on Instagram so the world knows” love.

Tuesday love.

The love that chooses you on a random Tuesday when nothing is particularly shiny. The love that makes dinner, or folds the laundry, or sends a text that simply says, “Thinking of you.” The love that shows up when there’s no spotlight at all.

Porch Light Love looks like learning to love someone over time. The way they get quiet when they’re overwhelmed. The way they need a minute before they can talk. The way they soften when they feel safe. It looks like bringing someone water without asking.

Not because it earns points. Just because.

And maybe that’s part of the problem—we’ve been taught to look for love in intensity. We’ve been trained to equate the spike of emotion with depth, the rush with the real thing. But intensity isn’t always intimacy, is it?

Sometimes people confuse drama with passion, especially if the love they witnessed at home was chaotic. If closeness always came with volatility, if affection was unpredictable, if connection meant walking on eggshells, then calm can feel unfamiliar.

Steady can feel suspicious.

Peace can feel boring.

But loyal love is often quieter than that. It doesn’t spike you. It settles you. It feels like exhaling. It feels like being able to be a whole person instead of a performance.

Also, loyal love isn’t always glamorous. Sometimes it’s deeply unsexy. Sometimes it’s sitting through a hard conversation instead of avoiding it. Sometimes it’s apologizing without explaining. Sometimes it’s staying present when it would be easier to disappear.

Maybe loyal love is simply the steady choice, made over and over again. In a world that is constantly asking us to be shinier, louder, more impressive, loyal love feels almost rebellious. Because loyal love says, “You don’t have to earn this.”

It says, “I’m here.” It says, “I choose you on a Tuesday.”

Maybe that’s what loyal love is—someone leaving the porch light on, again and again, so your nervous system learns the way back.

So yes, I believe love will save us all.

I just don’t want it wrapped in cellophane with a stuffed bear holding a balloon that says “Be Mine.”

Give me the Tuesday love.

Give me the scrap-paper-under-the-windshield love.

Give me the love that feels like safety.

Valentine’s Day can keep its glitter.