I recently read Love and Other Words, and there is one passage that hasn’t left me since:

When I read that, something inside me cracked open.

I realized I don’t love for the safe part. I love for the scary part.

Safe is appealing. Safe is stable. Safe is rational. Safe makes sense on paper. Safe is the person your friends approve of, the one who checks the boxes, the one who won’t disrupt your life.

Safe is also quiet. Predictable. Contained.

Scary is different. Scary is when your heart feels like it is walking around outside your body. Scary is when one person’s voice changes your whole nervous system. Scary is hunger and tenderness and vulnerability tangled together. Scary is not knowing whether you will be held or dropped and choosing to love anyway.

The problem is when you love deeply, you hurt deeply.

Most people I know choose safe. They are calculated. Realistic. They make rational decisions about compatibility, timing, logistics. They measure risk and minimize it. And I understand that. Life is already hard. Why make it harder?

But love, to me, has never been rational.

Love is irrational. It rearranges your priorities. It makes you feel things that do not make sense. It makes you brave in ways you did not plan for. It makes you vulnerable in ways you did not anticipate.

Right now, I am still holding on to the scary person from my past.

We are no contact. Silence where there used to be intensity. And yet, he still lives in the background of my thoughts. I cannot look at other men without comparing them to him. No one feels as alive. No one feels as electric. No one feels like that kind of risk.

And maybe that is the hardest part about choosing scary. When it ends, it does not end cleanly. It lingers. It echoes. It sets a standard for depth that safe cannot quite reach.

Sometimes I wonder if choosing scary is foolish. If I should train myself to want safe. To want steady. To want predictable.

But then I remember that feeling. The feeling of being completely seen, completely understood without explanation. The feeling of passion that made my hands shake. The feeling of being alive in a way that startled me.

I do not know if scary always leads to forever. I do not know if scary is sustainable. I do not know if I will ever stop comparing.

But I do know this. I would rather have felt that depth once than live an entire life untouched by it..

How do we find a love that is both?

A love that is steady but still electric. Secure but still alive. A love where your heart is not clenched in someone’s fist but is held carefully by someone who understands how fragile and powerful it is.

What about you? Which one do you choose? Safe or Scary?