The Unlearning
I used to think relationships were about doing everything right — being the provider, being admired, being chosen. After my divorce, I realized I hadn’t chosen love freely; I’d chosen what I thought I should choose. I was following a social script — the monogamous ideal, the “alpha male” role, and the pursuit of the kind of beauty others would envy.
This unlearning happened on two fronts. Internally, I had to confront the lack of self-esteem and boundaries that led me to mistake acceptance for love. I also had to recognize how often I entered relationships simply because I could, or because I needed intimacy and didn’t know how to ask for it honestly. Instead of being transparent about desire — and risking rejection — I offered what I thought the women I liked wanted, not what I truly had to give. I had to ask myself who I was when I wasn’t performing to be liked — when I wasn’t bending to fit expectations. I also realized that I believed I had control over the outcome of every relationship, that if I only gave enough, proved enough, or adjusted enough, I could make it work. I kept trying to demonstrate my value by giving freely without ever asking for my own needs to be met. That habit led me to accept relationships I didn’t truly want, leaving me feeling friendzoned, unseen, and unsatisfied.
Externally, I had to deconstruct the traditional and Catholic framework I grew up in. I’d inherited beliefs about what a “good man” should be: the provider, the moral anchor, the one who finds security and salvation through a single, lifelong relationship. Love, I was taught, was duty and sacrifice; sexuality, something to mask or control. I saw sex and desire as shameful — echoes of the idea of original sin, especially when it came to women. The expectation was that they should feel insulted if I expressed desire openly, and that I was a predator if what I sought was a casual encounter. I believed desire should be disguised as devotion — that intimacy began only after commitment. The consequence of all this repression was that it deepened my tendency to behave deceitfully, offering half-truths rather than honesty.¹
Beyond my personal unlearning, I’ve come to see the broader challenge of our times: modern men and women are living through shifting expectations. The model I grew up with worked for many — it created stability and predictable roles that made sense in their era. People my age often still expect it, consciously or not, because it’s what we saw modeled. Yet I’ve learned it doesn’t align with my principles; I no longer see love as a transaction of duties or appearances but as a meeting of equals, where both partners take responsibility for their own growth and honesty.
What I didn’t know then was that love built on performance and conformity always collapses under its own weight. It wasn’t failure — it was misalignment.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung
¹This behavior does a disservice to ourselves – men who want to build a good relationship. By perpetuating dishonesty and avoidance, we help create a cycle of mistrust and exhaustion: a pool of jaded women who have been asked to believe too many times and let down just as often. I didn’t inspire the kind of trust the Gottmans describe as essential for real attraction — the safety that comes from authenticity rather than performance. The Gottmans often say that trust is built in small moments, when each partner chooses honesty over avoidance. By hiding my true desires, I eroded that foundation — each half-truth a tiny betrayal of intimacy.
The Mirror Moment
After the divorce, I began seeing patterns I’d ignored:
- Basing my worth on whether others desired me.
- Idealizing people I barely knew.
- Staying in relationships where my feelings didn’t matter — because I hadn’t shown they were valuable.
- Accepting friendships with women while secretly hoping they’d eventually develop romantic feelings for me.
- Staying in relationships where I hoped my partners would someday “grow” or “learn,” rather than accepting who they were at that moment.
I also realized I had been measuring success by the mononormative path — the milestones of dating, exclusivity, marriage, and permanence — rather than listening to my own truth. I was looking for superficial or socially approved traits rather than noticing how I actually felt with someone, or the emotional cost of staying when it no longer aligned. Too often, I lowered my bar just to maintain a connection that had “future potential” if I tried hard enough or was patient enough. Looking back, I see how that mindset kept me chasing imagined possibilities rather than responding to the truth of the moment — it was hope disguised as control, and it cost me presence and peace.
In that mirror moment, I discovered that my desire to be loved was often a cover for my fear of being seen.
“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The False Roads
I went through detours — pickup artists, traditionalists, and false gurus promising formulas. It took reading Jung’s The Hidden Self to understand that what I was really chasing wasn’t women, it was validation — the illusion that being wanted meant being worthy.
But this section of my journey was also about regaining power over myself. I stopped feeling victimized by my lack of conventional looks or height and began to accept what Nietzsche and the Stoics called amor fati — loving one’s fate. I began to understand that my value didn’t come from meeting an ideal but from embracing who I already was, flaws included. I am enough, I always was.
Instead of feeling like a victim of circumstances and trying to manipulate others to hide my perceived shortcomings, I learned to take control where I could: to work on myself, to be authentic, and to accept that others had the right to decide if they liked me or not. My task wasn’t to persuade anyone but to reveal myself honestly, and to get to know the other person deeply enough to understand whether they could meet what I needed from the relationship. That shift changed how I viewed myself: I stopped approaching dating as a test of worth and started seeing it as an exchange between equals, where my needs mattered as much as anyone else’s. In choosing authenticity, I began to regain self-respect.
That realization was liberating. I could finally let go of the illusion of control over others and reclaim the only thing truly mine — my integrity. I learned that true power lies not in getting what you want but in showing up as who you are, without masks or excuses.
“No man is free who is not master of himself.” — Epictetus
The First Rule: Look Within
The first rule I learned was that you can’t build a healthy relationship from a place of emptiness. Before you can “be yourself,” you have to find who that is — outside of roles, scripts, and the need to please.
Looking within meant confronting truths I had long avoided. I realized that I didn’t want the traditional family I had once thought was mandatory. The pressure of being someone’s “everything” felt suffocating, and I began to see that what I truly desired was a relationship — or relationships — built on freedom: the freedom to pursue what brings meaning, to cultivate financial independence, and to create interdependence and community rather than submission or domination.
I subscribe to Epicurus’s philosophy that the highest form of relationship is friendship — a bond in which each person gives what they can and what they want, without obligation or fear. That understanding led me toward ethical non‑monogamy, not as a strict rule or rebellion, but as a personal philosophy grounded in honesty and self‑knowledge. It became about building connections that honor autonomy while celebrating shared joy.
Authenticity isn’t about transparency alone; it’s about coherence — when your words and actions match.
“Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.” — Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
The Second Rule: Safety and Curiosity
Real connection begins when both people can exist without fear of punishment or judgment. Seneca said that true friends should be able to share all their thoughts — and in love, that’s even more true.
Curiosity sustains what safety allows. This year, I experienced that truth firsthand while cohabiting with a very good friend whose ideology differs significantly from mine. It was a quiet, transformative kind of learning — the kind that unfolds through everyday gestures and conversations. We shared secrets that might once have felt shameful and spoke openly about each other’s thoughts and contradictions. There were moments of disagreement, even discomfort, but they were met with laughter instead of judgment. One small but meaningful example was her relationship with my cat. She often tells me how challenging it is to care for him — how he drives her crazy — but she still tries her best every day. Seeing her effort, her patience, and her willingness to care for something that frustrates her made me feel I could trust her and felt loved by her. It reminded me that love often hides in the quiet persistence of everyday care.
In that space, I discovered how rare and precious it is to feel entirely safe being yourself — to know that honesty won’t trigger rejection, that the relationship won’t vanish at the first sign of difference. That kind of safety made curiosity possible, and curiosity, in turn, deepened trust.
When you stop performing and start wondering — about your partner’s inner world and your own patterns — a relationship becomes a dialogue, not a negotiation.
“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy.” — Esther Perel
The Third Rule: Boundaries Are Love
To know yourself is to know your no’s. Healthy love isn’t built on tolerance of everything; it’s built on respect for limits — both yours and theirs.
Curiosity continued to guide me here. Understanding where things were going meant paying attention to whether what was being asked of me was something I could genuinely give. For instance, I value consideration — when people honor the time and intention I put into planning and keeping commitments. I don’t have a plan B; I give my full presence. So, when someone leaves my messages on read or takes days to respond, it feels careless to me. I’ve learned that this is not everyone’s rhythm, but it’s one that affects my sense of safety. My boundary now is to take distance from those who consistently do that.
In the past, I would have given endless chances, stewing in passive-aggressive silence or vague disappointment. Now, I understand that when I communicate my discomfort to someone who is genuinely curious about me — who values me and wants me in their life — they’ll respond with consideration: either honoring it or negotiating around it with care. What I can’t accept anymore are empty apologies without change or accountability. Boundaries, I’ve realized, are not walls but invitations to mutual respect.
“The weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.” — Leo Buscaglia
The Fourth Rule: Reciprocity, Not Heroism
For years I carried the “provider” myth — the man who must lead, fix, and endure. But love is not leadership; it’s partnership.
Consideration became the thread that stitched this lesson together. I had spent so much of my life considering everyone else’s comfort, needs, and moods while completely forgetting to include myself in that circle of care. I would cook, drive, clean, and take up tasks even when my own needs went unmet, secretly hoping those gestures would trigger compassion, reciprocity, or curiosity in others. But that’s not love — it’s manipulation disguised as generosity.
Now I know I don’t need to expect my needs to be guessed. True consideration includes myself too. I have to communicate what I need, assertively and without guilt, and set boundaries around those needs to protect my energy and integrity. Love rooted in mutual consideration doesn’t demand self-erasure — it honors both people equally.
I learned to stop performing strength and start embodying wholeness — to value myself in the mix, to expect reciprocity rather than rescue.
“One must learn to love oneself — thus do I teach — with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and need not roam.” — Friedrich Nietzsche (paraphrased)
The Fifth Rule: Compersion and Freedom
From polyamory, I learned that love isn’t ownership. But before I got there, I had to confront how deeply mononormativity had normalized jealousy and control. I once thought it was acceptable for a partner to tell me who I could or couldn’t be friends with. I let go of many good female friends to accommodate my partners’ insecurities and was sometimes forced to choose sides. I’m not innocent either — I’ve hurt more people than I’d like to admit through my own jealousy, which I didn’t recognize until I began reading Jung. I imposed restrictions when I felt insecure or unable to give what my partners wanted, confusing control with safety.
Over time, I learned that jealousy and possessiveness often come from unmet needs and fear. But how selfish is it to push someone to do something with you that you don’t care about or aren’t good at? To love someone is to let them be — to let them choose you for what you genuinely bring into their life, not to corner them with threats of loss or guilt.
True love is being a place of safety, not a place where your partner has to hide parts of themselves from you. Compersion — feeling joy for another’s happiness, even when it doesn’t center you — is born from that trust.
If I want someone’s best, I must accept that the best for them may not always be me. True connection happens when both choose each other — not because they must, but because it’s good, here and now.
“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.” — Albert Camus
Love in Times of Change
We live in times of transformation. Traditional gender roles are dissolving, and with them, the old certainties of what men and women are supposed to be in love.
The social scripts that once preserved stability — marriage as duty, man as provider, woman as caretaker — were built to preserve social order and power structures, not fulfillment. They made sense in an era where choice was scarce and identity was inherited.
But today, we can choose. We can shape our paths, our families, and our loves. And yet, beneath that freedom, the old forces still whisper — the ancestral anxieties of belonging, the instinct to conform, the biological signals of attraction that evolved to secure survival, not happiness.
Love today is no longer about having a bigger farm or kingdom — it’s about conscious connection. It asks us to look inward, to meet one another not as roles but as humans — complex, evolving, capable of growth and redefinition.
“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.” — Seneca\
“To love is to recognize yourself in another.” — Eckhart Tolle
Building from the Present
Healthy love, I’ve found, is built like this:
- From authenticity, not performance.
- From curiosity, not control.
- From mutual care, not sacrifice.
- From self-worth, not self-erasure.
It’s not eternal certainty — it’s a shared present: two people meeting in truth, again and again, because they choose to.
These lessons form more than a personal philosophy — they’re a quiet manifesto for loving in modern times. They ask that we stay conscious in how we love: to be aware of our inherited scripts, our fears, and our hopes, and to bring them into the light. True partnership begins when both people know they are responsible for their own happiness yet willing to contribute to each other’s peace.
This kind of love is not about perfection or permanence but about participation — about showing up with care, curiosity, and courage. It’s where autonomy and connection dance, where freedom does not threaten intimacy but deepens it.
“Amor fati — love your fate.” — Friederich Nietszche
References & Inspirations:
- John & Julie Gottman – A Man’s Guide to Women
- Esther Perel – Mating in Captivity, The State of Affairs
- Alain de Botton – Essays in Love, The Course of Love
- Carl Jung – The Undiscovered Self
- Seneca – Letters from a Stoic
- Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
- Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus
Juan Alberto López Cavallotti 
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