This is the entire summary of an intimate scene in most movies, be it romance or not.

But I hate it.

I hate how we are always shown that they undress each other in the beginning. I want to see what happens after, when it’s all done and nothing remains, except the space where love can exist.

When he looks at her with so much love and kisses her while holding her in his arms.

I want to see him helping her get into her shirt, slide it down her head and then laugh at her hair that he messed up. I want to see his hands go through her hair in the attempt to make it look clean.

I think that’s the whole point of sex.

When someone helps you get into your clothes again, not because they will gain something from it, but because of the most simple thing called love.

Anyone can undress you, but only the one will set your hair after getting you into that shirt.

Physical intimacy isn’t hard to find. It’s easy. It’s everywhere.

Someone can want you and still not love you because they never saw you as a person. You were mostly a concept, a fragment of their imagination, an image they made of you years ago and still hold onto—that version of you where there is no space to breathe. Sometimes they put you on a pedestal and forget you have feelings too.

But what is worse with these people is that they don’t even know what they want from you and that they couldn’t love you.

The moment they see something that is not part of their fantasy, like emotions, they think you have betrayed them and you have to leave because there is no point in staying.

But someone looking at you with certainty is rare.

I don’t want the intensity of being wanted. I want the security of being chosen.

I remember reading Greta Gerwig’s excerpt from the movie Frances Ha (2012) on what it means to be in love, how it feels to be in love without your nervous system always on fight or flight.

It’s that thing when you are with someone, and you love them, and they know it, and they love you, and you know it. You can be at a party, talking to other people, laughing and shining, and then you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes—not because you are possessive, or because it’s precisely sexual, but because that is your person in this life.

I think this is what I want in a relationship, in life.

The courage to love someone with the certainty of its lasting.

Not the “I want us to be together till the end,” but the certainty that you are here when we are together, so I don’t have to wait at the door while holding it and prepare myself for you to walk away at any time, so later I can say to myself, “See, told you.”

Where my nervous system is not always on fight or flight, where I don’t question your intentions, the hidden meaning behind your words, or think everything you are saying is a lie and that you have said the same thing to every girl before me.

Where I don’t check your phone while you are asleep, go through your following, feel anxious when someone uses the word cheating, panic if you utter Thailand.

All this leads to someone saying you are too difficult or too hard to love, even crazy sometimes.

But I would rather live without love than see myself go through it.

But what is love?

Love is when I tell you I want to eat something and you run to get it for me, you serve it to me and I say I am not hungry, so throw it out, all of it, and hold me in your arms and say, “Tell me, what do you want next?”

When you are waiting while I am still fixing my hair and cannot decide between the two shades of red lipstick, and instead of rushing and getting passive-aggressive, you hold my hand when we finally leave.

When you remember the things I love and are curious enough to ask questions about my childhood and why I am the way I am.

When you listen to the same story again.

Doing their laundry and dishes when they are exhausted or sick.

When you don’t feel the need to constantly keep talking because you know that I know, and I know that you know.

When he listens to what you say and even more to what you don’t.

We have heard about how physical compatibility is what keeps the spark in a relationship.

People often talk about the lack of spark after the honeymoon phase and how their partners aren’t that much in love as they used to be, hence the need to keep the spark on.

But I never really understood the concept of losing the spark. I don’t understand if love can ever lose its spark.

Because when you love someone, you love them as a person, as a whole, and not some good parts of them. You don’t love them on occasions; you love them every day. I never quite understood relationships which keep on going due to physical things instead of emotional ones.

If I have to keep being physically appealing to someone for love, then I don’t want love.

Sex is important, but not enough to make someone stay or be soft to you.

We see movies like Fifty Shades of Grey and 365 Days, where a man falls in love with the woman and we think, wow, that’s just the perfect love story, where being desirable is the closest thing to being loved.

We mistake love for intensity, someone wanting you, being almost obsessed with you.

But love is devotion.

Love is slow and quieter.

A man sees a girl and gets mesmerised by her beauty and falls in love with her endlessly, and then they live happily.

Then she has to maintain that beauty so that the relationship doesn’t lose the spark. She has to be appealing enough to her husband to tempt him after work.

All this puts enormous pressure on women to stay conventionally attractive. You grow up believing someone will love you if you are beautiful. You see everything that’s wrong with your body in the mirror and wish to be like someone else.

People think women who fit into society’s beauty standards have it easy. It must be easy to find love when you are beautiful, right?

But is it actually true?

They grow up getting validated silently for a certain way they look. Yes, they might get asked out more and may get more attention, but at some point you feel this is all you have. You stop being a person. Nobody sees you; they just see what’s in front of their eyes.

Being desired doesn’t mean being understood.

Being the centre of someone’s attraction doesn’t mean being safe.

Being wanted by many people doesn’t mean being known by one.

What remains when there is no intensity, no desire?

When you aren’t pretty?

What happens when you are sick and have lost the colour of your face?

What happens when you are crying?

When you’re angry?

When you’ve gained weight?

When you’re exhausted?

When you’re not dressed nicely?

When you’re having an awful day?

When you’re simply... ordinary?

How will you maintain the so-called spark?

You will need someone who can put Vaseline on your chapped lips when you are sick and too weak to do that yourself, someone who will cancel their plans with their friends only to stay with you and watch The Grinch, and to make dinner for you.

When we talk about love, we are talking about desire mistakenly. We read books on dark romance and watch movies like Fifty Shades of Grey, but when you think about it, there is no love, only desire—the desire to own someone, to have them in possession.

Whereas love is devotion.

Even when you cannot see it, it’s still there, with or without desire.

I want you.

I am here.

All this makes me come back to the same question:

What happens the morning after to love when nothing interesting is happening?

When there is no anniversary, no special occasion, no birthdays, no grand gesture.

Do you still love me when nothing romantic is happening and we have lost all the spark?

Someone in whose arms you can cry too, who doesn’t think you are so hard to love.

Someone on whom you can sometimes throw toys at because even in anger you don’t want to hurt them.

Someone who won’t make you feel bad for your weight or the way you dress.

Someone who can love you when you are not pretty or sexy or hot, when you are not the manic pixie dream girl they fantasise about.

Love is the courage of loving someone openly, in front of your family, in front of your friends.

Giving a foot rub when we come home after my feet hurt from wearing heels all day.

Do you still love me when there is nothing romantic happening?

I wonder if love starts from the morning after.

The shirt.

The hair.

The smile.

Sometimes at dinner table conversations, parents and relatives often talk about a child, the unproblematic one, who never troubled them with anything, who was always polite and calm, always understanding.

I was that child, who didn’t feel like a child, who didn’t know how to be one.

During lunch breaks, everyone talked about their crushes, the exchange of occasional smiles and application of lip-gloss after assembly in hope they would notice.

I was accused of not telling whom I liked. I told them it was Harry Potter.

I lied.

I never had a crush on anyone.

And I never understood why. For some time, I told myself because they were not kind enough, but deep down I always knew that wasn’t true.

Then I told myself I had important things to do rather than having a silly crush on a boy.

On occasions, I would hear people saying how only girls of questionable character have boyfriends, and as a child I thought maybe it was wrong.

I never threw a tantrum for an ice cream or cried for toys in the supermarket. I was always satisfied with what was given to me.

Once my parents told me I didn’t eat ice cream when I found out we had a home loan, I wanted to save every penny. I was seven.

I acted like I don’t remember anything, but when I went to my room and saw myself walking past the ice cream counter, I really wanted to have it.

I would have got it if I told my parents, but I never did.

I don’t know why I never asked. I didn’t know that I could.

Father, I want an ice cream.

See, so easy.

When I look back at my childhood, there is nothing that can be the reason because of which I grew up too fast. I always had everything.

I sometimes wonder if people are the way they are because they cannot be anyone else, there is nothing you can do about it.

There isn’t a sad story or a difficult childhood.

It’s just the way they are.

I was never taught to be responsible, I just was.

I remember feeling happy whenever someone told my mom, “Your daughter is mature.”

I tried to become more responsible as I grew up, I took pride in it and it made me feel better than children my age.

Maybe I didn’t simply lose something by being responsible. Maybe I gained something from it too; the occasional praise by elders.

I built part of my identity around it. Now I am discovering the cost of something I once considered one of my best qualities.

At that time, I never realized that later in life I would grieve the child I never got to become and walk around in the body of a woman wanting to be a child again.

I understand her now, why she never had a crush.

The child who didn’t ask for ice cream became the girl who didn’t allow herself to want love.

First it felt irresponsible, then it became shame, as if wanting love would make my hunger for love real.

It was.

But I didn’t want anyone to know.

And I didn’t want to ask for it.

Sometimes the idea of love seems so distant that you convince yourself that it isn’t for you. Fear of never finding love becomes so intense you don’t even allow yourself to have a crush.

A lot of things have changed since then.

I ask for things now and tell people how I feel.

But I still struggle to accept love even when it is served on a platter.

Last week I saw a bunch of flowers near the street light, it was drizzling and it looked magical. I brought them and walked home smelling their sweet fragrance, half wet.

I allow myself to believe there is love waiting for me in the future even if I don’t see it.

I smile every time I walk past a cute bakery.

Life feels more mine now.

I am not mad at my younger self.

I understand her better now, why she did, why was she like this.

Sometimes I still feel guilty for giving myself ridiculous advice and if ever things get messy.

I never found my answer and I don’t think I ever will. Maybe I don’t need it anymore.

All I know now is that I want the ice cream,

the flowers,

the love,

the life.

Love, Anjali.