The greatest misunderstanding about love

Science, after all, has become wonderfully unromantic. It has peered beneath the poetry and found pathways instead. Dopamine, it tells us, surges through the reward centres of the brain when we meet someone who arrests our attention. Norepinephrine sharpens our focus till one face eclipses a crowded room. Oxytocin and vasopressin, arriving later, begin weaving attachment from repeated moments of safety. Before a single sonnet is written, before a ghazal is sung, before a trembling hand reaches for another, our neurons have already begun negotiating desire.

How gloriously disappointing.

Or perhaps, how gloriously liberating.

Because if attraction begins as chemistry, then maybe love is not something that happens to us. Maybe it is something we choose after the chemistry has quietened.

I have spent much of my life watching people the way a cook watches a simmering pot. Long before the stew boils over, you can sense its direction. The aroma shifts. The bubbles change. The silence inside the vessel becomes eloquent. Human beings are no different. We reveal ourselves in details smaller than declarations.

People often ask me what attracts me first.

The answer surprises them.

Yes, I notice beautiful eyes. I notice a face that seems sculpted by sunlight rather than symmetry. I notice the scent that lingers gently after someone has walked past. I notice the cadence of a voice, the confidence of a stride, the way a hand reaches for a cup of coffee or folds itself quietly into a pocket.

But beauty has never been enough.

I notice whether someone has ironed a linen shirt with care rather than bought one with an expensive label. Whether their shoes have been polished because they respect themselves, not because someone else might notice. Whether colours converse instead of compete. Whether elegance comes from attention rather than affluence.

Most of all, I watch whether they are observing while being observed.

Do they notice the waiter before checking their own reflection?

Do they thank the driver?

Do they move through a room believing they own it, or understanding they share it?

Awareness has always seemed infinitely more seductive than appearance.

Perhaps that is because awareness is the first evidence of kindness.

And kindness, unlike beauty, grows more beautiful with time.

Yet admiration is not desire.

Admiration is architecture.

Desire is weather.

Somewhere, almost invisibly, something shifts.

For me, it has never been perfection that awakens longing.

It is fracture.

It is the smallest crack in confidence.

The shy glance that arrives after an otherwise fearless conversation.

The laughter that somehow carries loneliness inside it.

The beautiful eyes that seem strangely vacant, as though they have travelled farther than the rest of the face.

The person who smiles while quietly grieving.

The soul that appears present and absent in the same breath.

Those are the moments when admiration begins to dissolve into something far more dangerous.

Compassion.

Perhaps I have always fallen in love less with beauty than with biography.

Every human face carries an invisible history.

Some wear it openly, etched into wrinkles that speak of decades survived. Others conceal it behind perfect teeth, impeccable tailoring and carefully rehearsed confidence. But somewhere beneath every polished performance lives a private person carrying losses the world cannot see.

I find myself wondering about those hidden stories.

Not because I believe I can rescue anyone. Life has taught me that rescue is often another form of arrogance.

But because stories have always interested me more than surfaces.

Maybe that is what cooking taught me.

No great meal is judged by its garnish.

It is judged by what happened before anyone arrived at the table.

The patient stirring.

The quiet waiting.

The invisible labour.

Love, too, is prepared long before it is plated.

And perhaps that is why I have mistaken desire for compatibility more than once.

Chemistry is immediate.

Character is revealed only through repetition.

A glance can intoxicate.

Consistency nourishes.

The first kiss belongs to dopamine.

The thousandth ordinary Tuesday belongs to trust.

Somewhere along the way, I learnt the difference.

Not easily.

Not gracefully.

Certainly not quickly.

Life has a peculiar habit of teaching us with examinations we never volunteered to take.

There was a time when I believed that if two people laughed easily, spoke honestly, travelled comfortably and occupied silence without awkwardness, the hardest work had already been done.

I was wrong.

Trust, I discovered, is not built during extraordinary moments.

It is built during ordinary ones.

In the repeated keeping of small promises.

In arriving when you said you would.

In listening without waiting for your turn to speak.

In choosing gentleness when irritation would have been easier.

We often imagine betrayal arrives wearing a mask.

It rarely does.

More often, it arrives wearing familiarity.

It sits across the table.

Shares dessert.

Learns your stories.

Wins your confidence one ordinary afternoon at a time.

Which is perhaps why broken trust hurts more than broken bones.

Bones know how to heal.

Trust has to learn an entirely new language.

Some years ago, I met someone through social media.

Like so many modern beginnings, it started with messages. Then conversations. Then laughter that migrated from screens into shared spaces. There were meals, long walks, unguarded stories, the easy rhythm that sometimes appears between two strangers who briefly convince themselves they have always known each other.

Nothing about those moments warned me of what would follow.

One afternoon, in another city, we met again.

We talked.

We laughed.

For nearly an hour, the world behaved exactly as I had expected it to.

And then it didn’t.

What began as a conversation ended in violence so sudden that it divided my life into before and after.

I survived.

Life, astonishingly, allowed me to remain.

But survival has its own curriculum.

Trauma, neuroscientists tell us, reshapes the brain. The amygdala becomes vigilant, forever scanning for danger. The nervous system learns to mistake uncertainty for threat. Safety, once assumed, must now be earned. Hypervigilance is not weakness. It is biology trying desperately to prevent yesterday from becoming tomorrow.

The remarkable thing, however, is not that my brain learnt fear.

The remarkable thing is that my heart refused to surrender hope.

I still begin with the same dangerous assumption I held as a child—that most people are good until they prove otherwise. Friends have told me this is naïve. Therapists have gently suggested caution. Neuroscientists would probably remind me that my amygdala has earned the right to be suspicious. Yet every morning I wake with the quiet conviction that one human being’s violence cannot be permitted to become my philosophy of humanity.

Otherwise, the person who tried to destroy me would continue succeeding long after the attack had ended.

That, I refuse.

The Bhagavad Gita has accompanied me through kitchens, illnesses, triumphs and grief. It has never once asked me to stop loving. Instead, Krishna asks something infinitely more demanding. He tells Arjuna: “Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana”—You have a right to your actions, but never to the fruits of those actions.

For years, I thought those words belonged only to duty, to work, to battlefields and burdens. Then one day I realised they also belong to love.

Perhaps love is the purest action we ever perform without any guarantee of its fruit.

You may tell someone they are beautiful.

They may never say the same to you.

You may offer honesty.

They may offer hesitation.

You may arrive with your whole heart.

They may still choose another path.

The Gita does not ask us to become indifferent. It asks us not to become imprisoned by outcomes.

That is an altogether different freedom.

We live in an age obsessed with strategy. Entire industries have sprung up around dating. Wait three days before replying. Never reveal your feelings first. Don’t seem too available. Protect your ego. Play hard to get. Maintain mystery. Win the negotiation.

Love has somehow become a boardroom.

I have never understood that.

If I think someone is beautiful, why should silence be more truthful than speech?

If someone’s kindness has rearranged the architecture of my day, why should gratitude wait for permission?

If another human being has reminded me that tenderness still exists in this bruised world, what exactly am I protecting by pretending otherwise?

Rejection has never frightened me.

Dishonesty has.

There is something profoundly liberating about telling another soul, “I find you beautiful.” Not because you expect possession, but because beauty deserves acknowledgement. They owe you nothing in return except the dignity of their truth.

If their answer is no, then no becomes a complete sentence.

Love that demands repayment was never love to begin with.

Perhaps this is why Urdu has remained such an enduring companion in my life. It understands something modern romance often forgets—that longing is not a failure of love. Longing is sometimes its finest expression.

Ghalib writes: “Ye na thi hamari qismat ke visal-e-yar hota…”. It was never my destiny to unite with my beloved.

Notice the astonishing grace of that admission. There is no accusation. No entitlement. No bitterness. Only acceptance. The beloved remains free. The lover remains truthful.

How extraordinary that a language could celebrate affection without insisting upon ownership.

Neuroscience, interestingly, seems to arrive at a similar doorway from another direction.

Researchers say early attraction is driven largely by reward. Novelty excites the brain. Desire narrows attention. We become gloriously irrational. Yet lasting attachment emerges elsewhere. It is built through repeated experiences of safety, predictability, consistency and care. Oxytocin does not bloom because someone is beautiful. It grows because someone keeps showing up.

Chemistry may ignite the fire.

Consistency keeps the house warm.

Perhaps we have confused these two for centuries.

We mistake excitement for endurance.

Intensity for intimacy.

Desire for devotion.

Real love, I suspect, is considerably quieter.

It remembers how you take your tea.

It notices when your laughter sounds tired.

It buys the fruit you forgot you liked.

It reaches for your hand in hospital waiting rooms without announcing itself.

It apologises first.

It forgives often.

It remains after applause has gone home.

I have loved enough, lost enough, survived enough to know that passion alone cannot carry a lifetime. Nor can fear.

Trauma teaches the nervous system to search constantly for exits.

Love gently guides us back toward entrances.

Both are trying to protect us.

Only one allows us to keep living.

People sometimes ask whether surviving violence made me cynical.

The honest answer is no.

It made me slower.

More observant.

More grateful.

It taught me to pay attention not to grand declarations but to small devotions. To the person who remembers. The person who returns. The person who notices. The person whose kindness is not performance but practice.

Those are the miracles now.

Not fireworks.

Not fantasy.

Presence.

Perhaps that is what I have been searching for all along.

Not perfection.

Presence.

Not someone who never carries darkness, but someone willing to let another sit beside it without shame.

Because every beautiful face carries an invisible biography.

The elegant woman ordering coffee before work.

The impeccably dressed man walking through an airport.

The child laughing too loudly.

The widow buying flowers.

The newlyweds holding hands.

The stranger sitting alone in a restaurant.

Every one of us is carrying memories our smiles cannot translate.

We are, each of us, unfinished manuscripts disguised as complete people.

Perhaps intimacy begins not when two bodies meet, nor even when two hearts recognise one another, but when two invisible histories feel safe enough to be witnessed without being repaired.

That may be the greatest misunderstanding about love.

We imagine its purpose is to fix.

Perhaps its purpose is simply to faithfully see.

The brain, remarkable as it is, can explain why my pulse quickens when beautiful eyes meet mine across a room.

It can explain why scent awakens memory, why longing lingers, why betrayal leaves neurological footprints.

But somewhere beyond neurons and neurotransmitters lives another mystery.

The mystery that allows a wounded person to trust again.

The mystery that teaches forgiveness without demanding forgetfulness.

The mystery that refuses to let violence become identity.

That mystery may never fit inside a laboratory.

Nor should it.

So I no longer ask whether love lives in the brain or in the heart.

I suspect it begins in the brain.

I know it deepens in the heart.

But I believe it is completed elsewhere—in character.

In the courage to tell someone they are beautiful without demanding they belong to you.

In the grace to bless their happiness, even if it is discovered in another’s embrace.

In the wisdom to walk away without hatred.

In the quiet faith that one person’s betrayal need not become another person’s burden.

Perhaps that is all love has ever asked of us.

To remain tender in a world that repeatedly recommends armour.

To remain curious in a world that profits from suspicion.

To remain open after every instinct tells us to close.

The brain may teach us how attraction begins.

Life teaches us how love endures.

And somewhere between Krishna’s counsel, a neuroscientist’s scan, and a poet’s sigh, I have finally found an answer gentle enough to believe.

Love is not the certainty that someone will choose us.

Love is the courage to remain fully human, whether they do or not.