Kitija Ozolina · Awareness Mentor for Mothers
How You Love (And What It Has to Do With How You Were Loved)
The way we learned to love in our first family is the template we carry into every relationship after. Not always consciously.
How you were loved when you were small becomes what love feels like to you as an adult. Not what you want it to feel like. What feels normal.
This is about that.
This is not a list to feel bad about. These patterns made sense once. They were adaptations. smart ones. to an environment that required them. Recognising them is not a verdict on you. It is just information.
When we are small, we learn what love is from the people who love us. Not from what they said, but from how it felt. Whether love came with consistency or conditions. Whether closeness felt safe or always slightly uncertain. Whether you had to earn it or it just was.
That feeling became your template. The thing that feels like love in your body. Which is why some patterns keep repeating — not because you're broken, but because they feel familiar.
Three patterns worth knowing.
Read each one. Notice where you recognise yourself.
The one who gives more than she receives
Being useful became the way to belong. You are very good at giving and very bad at receiving. When someone offers help, something in you deflects it. You might not realise that receiving requires trust. and that somewhere along the way, needing something from people started to feel dangerous.
You confuse intensity with love. The push and pull. The making up. You feel most comfortable when you are needed. When it is calm, something in you waits for the next thing. Calm starts to feel like the quiet before something goes wrong.
The one who holds everything at a small distance
You are drawn to people who feel familiar in a way you cannot explain. Familiar does not mean safe. It means recognisable. It means: this is what love felt like when you first learned it. Your sense of worth in the relationship depends on the other person's mood. When they are happy, you are okay. When they are distant, something inside you asks: what did I do?
You tend to attract the same dynamic even when the person is different. Different face. Same feeling. The pattern is not in the person. it is in what you recognise as love.
The one who goes quiet or goes overboard
You either over-explain your feelings or go completely silent. Both are ways of managing. One tries to make them understand everything. One decides there is no point trying. Conflict feels life-or-death even when it is not. because once it was. Your nervous system still responds the same way — as if then and now are the same moment.
You are terrified of being left. even when there is no real threat. The fear does not wait for evidence. It lives just underneath, ready. And when you finally feel safe, part of you braces for when that will end.
One next step
Think of the relationship in your life that feels most charged. Not the easiest one — the one with the most pull. What does love feel like in that relationship? Not what you want it to feel like. What does it actually feel like when it's there?
That feeling is the template. Seeing it is the beginning of having a choice.
The way you love is not wrong. It is just learned. And learning can change.
Seeing the template is not the same as being trapped in it. The moment you can name it, something shifts. Not overnight. But it starts.
What did you learn love felt like, and how much of that are you still reaching for?
With love, Kitija 🤍
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