There are different kinds of love, and for a long time I believed only one of them could truly set my heart alight.
I loved my late husband deeply. Our love was wild and passionate, full of intensity and emotion. He told me he loved me every day, and those words mattered more than I realised at the time. We lived loudly — in feeling, in expression, in the way our lives collided with one another.
But alongside that passion was volatility. Shouting. Emotional highs and lows that left me constantly bracing myself. He struggled to hold down a job, and life often felt uncertain and unsteady. I loved him fiercely all the same.
When he died suddenly, my world shattered.
Grief didn’t arrive neatly. It came as chaos. My emotions were everywhere, my sense of safety gone, my future suddenly dark and unrecognisable. I was devastated — not just by the loss of him, but by the loss of the life I thought we were building. I survived those days, but I wasn’t really living.
And then, slowly, quietly, another kind of love found me.
My husband now did not sweep in with fireworks or drama. He coaxed me back to life instead. Gently. Patiently. Without demanding that I be anything other than exactly where I was.
He showed me a love without shouting.
A love that didn’t rise and fall like a storm.
A love built on steadiness, humour, and quiet reliability.
He is calm in ways I never knew I needed. Steady in a way that has taught my nervous system how to rest. He makes me laugh — genuinely, easily — and reminds me that joy doesn’t have to be loud to be real. He is attractive not only in how he looks, but in how he shows up, day after day, without fanfare.
Watching him as a father has deepened my respect for him beyond words. He is present, kind, playful, and emotionally safe. The way he loves our child has reshaped my understanding of what a healthy family can feel like.
This relationship has changed me.
Not because it is perfect, but because it is grounded. Because it allows space for growth rather than survival. Because I am no longer reacting to life — I am participating in it.
Every day, we grow together. We learn one another. We choose one another. And in doing so, I have become a better person — calmer, more patient, more secure in who I am.
I will always carry love for my late husband. That love belongs to a chapter that shaped me profoundly. But it no longer defines the way I live.
This love — the one I have now — is the love that brought me back to life.
And I am endlessly grateful for the man who showed me that safety, laughter, and steadiness can be just as powerful as passion — and perhaps, in the end, even more so.