The Lover Girl’s Guide to Real Love

I’m currently rereading All About Love, and after living more life, I feel seen by this book in ways that come with age.

I feel like it’s necessary to say I have been fortunate enough to really see love – as it’s defined by bell hooks – in action. From life long marriages that still felt new to deep sisterhood that ebbed and flowed over decades to the unconditional love given to a baby girl by her mothers village despite having no blood relation. These lived experiences allowed me to really understand the simplicity & complexity of love in a healthy way. Since you dont know me well as a reader its important for the context of this essay.

Leaning into bell’s wisdom made something in my pov click— it helped me realize just how deeply distorted our understanding of love really is. To be honest we are in a love crisis. We see it everywhere: there are more and more of us disengaging from relationships altogether—romantic, familial, or platonic. Because we are hitting wall after wall built by trauma, a festering need for power, unresolved emotions, lack of empathy & communication skills.

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Because it’s not that people don’t want love – even the thuggish amongst us (aka me) desire deep radical love. What stops us from receiving it is that most of us don’t know what love actually is or how to feel safe in it.

Love is for sure one of the most talked about things on the earth. For eons, love has been written about, sung about, and debated— and we could never come to a universal definition. Even in the dictionary, the definition of love is vague and incoherent.

And as bell expresses without a clear definition we all collectively agree on, what the hell are we expecting to experience? It’s like wanting to bake a cake but you guess the ingredients (& not in the intuitive way many Black bodies let the Ancestors guide us in seasoning our food) and it comes out different at best, disturbing at worst. We need a clear baseline so we can begin to heal and enjoy all the things love has to offer. I’m grateful this book provides a comprehensive definition that can work for every type of dynamic.

I found solace in the way she broke down what love consists of and it inspired me to explore more of my own relationship to love through a clearer lens. Hooks give us six foundational aspects that can guide us to check in and see if we’re experiencing real love or something else. The 6 aspects of love are:

Care

Affection

Recognition

Respect

Commitment

Trust

Most of what people associate love with today does not meet this criteria. Instead, we are engaging with distorted perceptions of love—not love itself, but our poorly learned misinterpretations of it.

Let me be realll clear: love itself can never be distorted.

Love is whole. Love is absolute. Love can only provide healing and expansion. However our conditioning, our trauma, and our ego-driven behaviors distort how we perceive and engage with love—but love remains unchanged & legendary.

Now can you see how & why so many of us struggle? Not because love is absent, but because we have never truly practiced it.

Love is something we get to practice. Using these six aspects fully—requires something most people have been told would make them weak & a pushover. It’s like the sabotage runs deeper than we realize because if we deny ourselves access to these 3 abilities we can never get to actual real love:

✨ Softness— so we can ease into the experience and safety of love instead of a need to have a false sense of control.

✨ Empathy— to lean into our humanity more to understand that life throws real curved balls instead of having demands on how people should deal with the trauma they experience.

✨ Grace— to give us the flexibility to practice love instead of thinking love is only good if it’s perfect.

When we truly experience love, it soothes the ego. Guiding it to dissolve the need to use manipulation, domination, or withholding in relationships. Love is a natural and kind leader, the ego is a tool. Too many of us do the opposite and contribute to this generational crisis. Shifting your perspective to look at love as something to practice not perform aligns you with your cosmic gifts, natural talents, and soul’s purpose. All direct benefits of experiencing love.

This allows us all to fully experience what you were designed to experience on Earth. Eventually we flourish in our healing & relationships because we radiate love outward – raising the collective frequency. If love is built on care, affection, recognition, respect, trust, and commitment—why do so many of us struggle to express & experience all six?

One of the most common fears people have about love is that they don’t know if they’re experiencing it. There’s a sense of embarrassment, like maybe they’ve given too much to the wrong person—or they realize they’ve never really received love at all. Because when even one of those six aspects is missing, the entire foundation of love is compromised.

Someone might be deeply cared for, but their opinions and worldview are constantly dismissed – that’s not love. That’s disrespect causing confusion.

As you can imagine when you fully understand what real love looks like, it can be painful. It’s like becoming aware of a blinding truth that shows you where you mistook something else for love. And that’s a tough wake up call, if it’s not handled with care. It can lead to distrusting yourself and having envy towards others who haven’t had the experience you had. I’ve done my best to not let the awakening of what love isn’t harden me. It’s allowed me to shift from the mindset of ‘“this feels like an obstacle” to “this can be an opportunity”.

Some questions I asked to help me transmute the feeling:

💡 Why did I feel like that was love?

💡 What patterns made me accept that as enough?

💡 Where do I need to create space and courage to engage with love for what it actually is?

Ok let me talk my ish real quick because like has gotten too much clout and for no good reason. We confuse like and love because we don’t fully understand like. Like isn’t small. But it’s also not love. I’ve reframed my understanding of like to be a signal or a starting point. It’s the moment that invites you to explore whether love could exist.

But like alone is not enough. And we continue to move as if it is – I really hate that for us!

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Like get’s us so distracted that we don’t check in with these aspects before diving in. We think attraction, connection, excitement, and attention are proof that love is happening. But love is more than chemistry. Love requires a lot more from us. Love wants us to be willing and vulnerable participants. These 2 questions helped me to know if I am ready to engage with the fullness of love or if I’m just enjoying the liking phase.

💡 Am I willing to dive deeper into the aspects of love because of how much I like this person?

💡 Am I willing to be vulnerable enough to get to love & receive it?

I really want us to understand that like can cloud judgment. Too many times, we mistake the rush of a new connection for something deeper than it is. We ignore red flags because our attraction makes us hopeful. We feel this deep connection that is just unexplainable, the excitement floods us with adrenaline and we need to express it before it drowns our body. And then? We end up hurt, questioning if love even exists.

But love does exist.

We just have to recognize it for what it actually is—not what we’ve been told it should be.

Media shapes our world and how we understand it. And we are always consuming some form of media (even this essay is media) that is reshaping our outlook and interaction with the world. From it we get guidelines, ideas to build on, next thing you know we think we have a notion of what love “should” look like—what kind of love we should want, how much we should be willing to endure, and what we should give up to keep it. Most times we have no fucking clue – and it shows.

Media sold us fantasies none of us can function in. How many of us grew up watching early disney princesses give up everything for a man they barely knew? Or the male centered (disguised as feminine but let’s be real the lead women only spoke about being with a man) rom-coms romanticized chasing, proving, and enduring. Love was always portrayed as get ‘chosen’—not about choosing wisely.

This is not to say all media is contributing to our downfall when it comes to love either. Media has helped many femmes realize they deserve more than what they were told to receive. We are in a renaissance for women – Black women in particular – where we are writing the books, singing the songs & creating the shows that influence our global understanding of love. However if we don’t take the time to check in with ourselves, we may continue to uphold beliefs that hinder our growth. We will continue to move in relationships without questioning if it actually works for us.

Now unhealed trauma makes dysfunction feel familiar. If your concept of love has always been tied to struggle, then instability can feel like passion. We confuse anxiety for chemistry, inconsistency for depth, and attachment for connection.

Collective conditioning tells us love is about endurance, not alignment. That if it’s easy, it’s not real. That if you set a boundary, you’re pushing love away. That love requires sacrifice—especially yours. You can see how this is fucking up our experience with love right?

I actually made a TikTok about being a Strategic Lover Girl. It came from the realization that a lot of what we consider “Lover Girl Culture” is actually rooted in what we’ve been conditioned to believe about love.

Being a Strategic Lover Girl means moving from the space of knowing yourself so well you recognize what helps & stunts growth. It’s about understanding love beyond attraction, attachment & performance. Because a lot of us weren’t taught love as defined by bell—we were taught survival from the distortion. Once you begin growing you have this desire to prioritize you first & realize that you’re ready for more than surviving. This will require a new pov to navigate the new terrain of actual love with ease.

For me I realized that I needed to give the full experience of love to myself first. To gauge how receptive I was to it and where I needed to explore more to heal. We get to be the first relationship we center in this full understanding of love – instead of one outside of us. Now I know self love is a touchy topic especially for my girlies who desire and require romantic love. I want to be super clear this isn’t about blaming or shaming ourselves for what we didn’t know before. It’s also not me saying we don’t already love ourselves either. It’s simply an opportunity to check in with yourself first since this is your life. To make sure you are aware of your own needs and energy before engaging with others. To be able to realize that we can start practicing now with this full definition of love.

Love isn’t about perfection. Love is about practice.

When we apply that understanding to Self-love we can witness how it isn’t about reaching some “perfect” version of yourself before you can experience love with others. It’s not about doing the bare minimum when it comes to what you really need so you can dive into a relationship. It’s about building a relationship with yourself that feels intentional, nourishing, and expansive.

It’s about giving yourself what you need first so that love—when it arrives romantically, platonically etc it can deepen & evolve. So you can sustain the natural extension of what already exists within you.

And when you know what real love feels like from the inside out, it becomes so much easier to recognize when it’s present in your relationships—and when it’s not. It’s the key to discernment, baby!

If you are able to apply the six aspects of love to yourself first, it becomes easier to:

Recognize when you are experiencing love.

Give yourself the boundaries needed to experience love healthily.

Move with discernment—whether it’s seasonal, a lesson, or a lifetime love.

If hearing that upsets you, it’s worth exploring why. Again no one is saying you don’t love yourself. It’s a suggestion that you can explore a deeper way—a more nourishing way—to love yourself. Maybe you’re covering the basics without realizing there’s more. Maybe you haven’t taken the time to ask:

💡 What would love feel like to me if I were self-partnering?

💡 Am I family to myself? Am I a friend to myself? Am I romantic to myself?

Because if you aren’t, love outside of you will always feel dangerous & uncertain.

bell hooks reminds us that love is the reason we’re here. That without love, we cannot fully experience life. And yet, so many of us are moving through relationships—romantic, platonic, familial, even professional—without fully knowing if we’re experiencing love in its entirety or just fragments of it.

But love is not something we stumble into. It’s something we choose. It’s something we engage with, cultivate, and sustain.

And that choice begins with clarity.

If this essay sparked something in you—if it made you rethink how love has shown up in your life and how you’ve been navigating it—then now is the time to take it deeper.

📖 Start with the books. If you haven’t read All About Love, I highly recommend you do. But honestly? I personally suggest reading Communion first. bell hooks builds a foundation in Communion that makes All About Love hit even deeper.

You can grab both from The Lit Twist—because if you’re going to invest in books about love, you might as well support a Black-owned bookstore while you’re at it.

💡 Then, take the next step. If you’re ready to go beyond reflection and into real self-exploration, the Strategic Lover Girl Blueprint is waiting for paid subscribers.

🔑 Inside, you’ll receive:

✨ A clear definition of each of the six aspects of love—so you can finally put words to what love is and isn’t.

✨ Guided reflection questions designed to hold you accountable for how you express and receive love.

✨ A deeper understanding of how love is (or isn’t) showing up in your life—across romantic, platonic, familial, and even work relationships.

✨ A framework to assess whether you’re experiencing love in full, or just pieces of it—and what that means for your relationships moving forward.

✨ Guided support practices—including my Love is Everywhere meditation and EFT techniques—to help you integrate this wisdom on a somatic level.

The answers are already within you—the Strategic Lover Girl Blueprint will help you see them clearly.

Because love isn’t something we should settle for.

Love is something we should engage in—fully, intentionally, and without distortion.