Why Love Can’t Be Boxed Into a ‘Relationship’

You know, the more I think about it, the more I feel like the word “relationship” misses the point when people talk about love. Modern life has this way of turning love into something transactional, like an agreement between two parties for mutual benefit: we’re dating, we’re exclusive, we’re “in a relationship”… what even is that? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming at this from some cynical, anti-modernist angle. I just feel like calling love a relationship narrows something infinite down into something finite—a box that can be labeled, categorized, and judged on Instagram. And doesn’t that kind of kill the soul of what love is supposed to be?

Let’s get into it. When you say you’re in a relationship, suddenly there are these unspoken rules. Maybe they’re based on your culture, friends, or just the movies you’ve grown up watching—you’ve been conditioned into thinking of love as something to measure. Are they texting enough? Are they showing enough affection? Are we progressing? It’s like love is ticking boxes on some invisible checklist. But true love? True love doesn’t operate like that. It’s not trying to “get” anywhere or prove itself—it just is. When love exists in its purest form, it’s selfless and abundant. There’s no need to define it, because it’s limitless. Tagging it as a “relationship,” though, feels like setting boundaries on something that was never meant to be contained. Love isn’t a tidy package, and it’s not a part of our “status updates.”

I think about this a lot, and a quote from the Bible hits me deeply whenever I do. 1 Corinthians 13:4–5 says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” Notice how there isn’t a single part of that passage tying love to measurable actions. The focus is on the essence, the intangible. No one’s making a checklist or defining terms. It’s an energy, a state of being, not a contract.

Here’s another thing about “relationship” culture: it’s all about reciprocity. If one side stops holding up their end of the bargain, it all comes crashing down. That tit-for-tat energy is the antithesis of love. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the kind of experience where you loved someone so much that it didn’t matter what you got from them in return. Maybe it was one-sided in the eyes of everyone else, maybe it felt unfair, but in that moment, it was real. You were just overflowing with love, and for you, that was enough. And people might call you foolish for it, but isn’t that the purest form of love? The kind of love that says, “I am here for you not because I expect anything, but because I just am. Your existence is enough for me.” Relationships, as we know them, don’t really seem to allow for that. They’re too focused on balance and consensus.

I’ll be honest, I think language is partially to blame for all this. The word relationship alone implies structure, doesn’t it? If you break it apart, it’s literally about how two people relate to one another. It’s grounded. It’s rooted in behavior, expectations, and outcomes. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But it’s tethered to something human, even mundane. And love is divine. I don’t mean divine in a strictly religious sense, although that’s part of it—love, in its fullest sense, feels transcendent, like it’s touching something far greater than the two people involved. In Hinduism, there’s this beautiful idea of bhakti, which is devotional love—a kind of surrender in which ego vanishes. That’s the spirit of what love is: giving without fear, connecting beyond condition. In a “relationship,” though? There’s still an ego, still a “me” and a “you,” and it’s that gap that makes it transactional.

Culturally speaking, this distinction is everywhere. Think about the classic love stories we all know—Romeo and Juliet, Orpheus and Eurydice, Lancelot and Guinevere. Were they in “relationships”? No. They burned with love so intense it tore apart their worlds. Their lives were messy, tragic, passionate, infinite… the opposite of the measured, practical idea of a relationship. Sure, you could argue that those stories are extreme (I mean, no one’s asking you to die for your partner), but the point still stands: love like that doesn’t come with manuals or frameworks. It exists on a completely different plane, one that can’t be captured by saying, “Oh yeah, we’re officially dating.”

I think about Rumi sometimes, too. He’s this Sufi poet who writes about love in a way that just cuts to the truth. One of his poems goes: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” That line speaks to love as a space without conditions, rules, or limitations. When you meet someone there, it’s not about trading anything—it’s about unity. Relationships, on the other hand, are bounded by rules rooted in “right” or “wrong” ways to act. Doesn’t it feel suffocating sometimes?

And here’s the thing: I don’t think “relationships” are bad. I’ve been in a few, and some have been beautiful. There’s value in companionship, kindness, compromise—it’s just that none of those things are the same as love. You can build a perfectly functioning relationship with someone you respect, admire, and work well with, but that doesn’t guarantee the presence of love. Conversely, you can love someone deeply and fail to build a “good relationship” by society’s standards. Because love, in its essence, doesn’t care about standards. It’s messy, wild, and uncontrollable. If anything, it thrives in the absence of structure.

Sometimes I think maybe that’s why so many people struggle with relationships. Somewhere, deep down, they’re hoping to find love, but what they end up doing is building frameworks to contain it. There’s this Zen saying I love: “When you try to grasp water, it slips through your fingers.” Love is like that. The harder you try to hold it in place, the more it disappears. But if you cup your hands lightly and let it rest there, it stays. Relationships can sometimes feel like a giant hand clamp, trying to squish love into submission. And that... rarely ends well.

Where does that leave us? I don’t have all the answers (who does?), but here’s what I think. Maybe the key is to stop being obsessed with whether we’re in or out of a “relationship.” Maybe the goal is to love without expectation. Don’t get me wrong—boundaries, respect, and communication matter. All of that helps love function in this world. But underneath all those logistics, love itself isn’t about rules or labels or frameworks. Call me naive, but isn’t it more magical that way?

So yeah, when I hear the term relationship, I can’t help but feel like it distorts the magic of what love really is. Maybe love doesn’t fit neatly into any kind of word. Maybe it’s too big, too wild, to be named. But isn’t that the best part about it?

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