There is a kind of love that arrives before the dawn light. It doesn’t ask for confirmation. It doesn’t scan the horizon for signs of approval. It simply wakes up with you, stretches its arms, and waits to see when you will find it and what you will do with it.

For a long time, I believed love was mostly equal if not different exchange. You give, I give. You stay, I stay. You understand, I soften. But experience has a way of sanding down naïveté without hardening the heart. What remains, if you are careful, is something stronger: the realization that the ability to love is one of the few things that cannot be taken from you unless you surrender it.

That ability is not sentimental. It is strength.

Psychologist Gary Chapman famously described five love languages — words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. The framework is simple enough to be written on a napkin, but lived intentionally it becomes a daily practice in sovereignty. Each one is less about the other person than it is about who you decide to be.

Words of affirmation are not flattery; they are a commitment to build with your mouth instead of bruise. Even when you could sharpen a sentence, you choose to steady it. Acts of service are not submission; they are motion. You make the call, carry the bag, fix the hinge, show up when you said you would. Quality time is not proximity; it is presence. You put the phone down. You listen without rehearsing your rebuttal. Receiving gifts is not consumption; it is thoughtfulness. A note left on a counter, a favorite snack remembered, a book placed where it might be found. Physical touch is not possession; it is grounding — a hand on a shoulder, a hug that lingers long enough to say, “I am here.”

None of these require reciprocity to exist. That is the part we forget.

We cannot control how love is interpreted. We cannot dictate timing, readiness, or return. We cannot guarantee outcomes. What we can control is tone, generosity, restraint, and creativity. We can decide not to weaponize private knowledge. We can refuse to keep score. We can protect someone’s dignity even when the moment tempts us not to. We can choose joy in a room that feels heavy. That choice, repeated quietly, is strength.

Morning love, then, is not naïve optimism. It is not pretending that everything lands cleanly. It is the decision to remain open when closing would feel safer. It is the discipline to continue affirming, serving, listening, touching, and creating thoughtful gestures because that is who you are — not because it guarantees applause.

Over time, I have come to see that the triumph is not that love always resolves the story the way we hoped. The triumph is that we remain capable of it. That we wake up, again and again, and find the will to play through the grief, pain and confusion and reach deep enough to make the day shine. That we can extend warmth without tally marks. That we can find joy without permission.

The ability to love is not fragile. If anything, it is forged in the moments when it would be easier to withdraw. And wherever that ability resides — steady, creative, generous — that is where we are most alive.