Two Faced Love Theory
Love… Love as null. Love as all. Love as pain. Love as pleasure. Love as duality. Love as contradiction. Love as performance versus authenticity. Love as self-serving versus self-sacrificing. Love as attachment versus indifference. Love as possession versus freedom. Love as what we say versus what we do.
Love sits right in the middle of all of that. That’s not a concept of not understanding love. That’s a concept of thinking about love too much and being bitten by its disappointment. “Two-Faced Love” isn’t about Hallmark hypocrisy. It’s about asymmetry. Asymmetry just means lack of equality or equality between parts or aspects of something; lack of organization. The duality of love-projection works like this: One person falls in love with who they think you are. While the other falls in love with who they need you to be. When the projections fade, one of them realizes that “pure moment” they have been chasing was never mutual. That realization changes everything. I have never felt very important to someone. Not that I wasn’t actually important, only that I never felt that from another. I have addressed it in the past only to be ignored or that I was never really important to that person. I was there to fill some sort of void for codependency. In recent years I have not been interested in women that have a tendency to wear their codependency as some sort of badge of honor for everyone to see. What I desire is fairly basic, but extremely important to me.
Attributes like:
Being chosen intentionally.
Not being a void filler.
Not being someone’s therapy patch.
Not being their identity stabilizer.
However, I have witnessed the opposite of these exact things from people over the years. I say I’m difficult, but here’s the honest objective observation of standing outside one’s self:
I’m not really difficult.
I’m rigid about asymmetry.
I do not tolerate asymmetry — not emotional outsourcing, not spiritual or emotional codependency, not being someone’s psychological prosthetic. If love requires me to subsidize another person’s void, I choose solitude. While this is at play, I often choose solitude. I say it all of the time. “Do not fuck with my solitude.” I’d rather be alone romantically than with the emotional vampire, that sucks the joy out of everything related to love and relationships. I am not scorned. I am self-fucking-aware. It’s not hatred of or toward love. It’s a fear of imbalance. Don’t we as a species have enough imbalance in our lives and our society?
I believe:
Dating equals shared activities.
Romance equals emotional escalation.
Love equals something that must grow organically on its own at its own pace.
But culturally?
Dating now means emotional immediacy.
Romance is assumed.
Intensity is expected.
Attachment is demanded.
Romantically and emotionally, I move slow. Most people move emotionally fast. That mismatch creates friction for me that makes me throw one in with the emotionally and spiritually codependent. They require this cooperation from me, which can only be given through organic growth. Not trapped into it or forced to choose all or nothing. If its all or nothing. I choose nothing, every time. Not some of the time but rather all of the time. She made my choice for me when she demanded it from me. That isn’t organic growth. That’s self-projection.
One thing I remember from my teenager high school years was how many girls would stay with or even date guys that treated them horribly. They would always say the same thing. “You don’t know him like I do.” Or; “You don’t see what I see.” That there was a “pure moment” that was once shared between the two where only one exists now. Usually, the girl chasing the guy, because it was really good for like a week or two and since then it has been terrible. I watched girls and grown women alike fall for this magic trick for nearly 25 years of my life. From 15 years old to 40, I saw women go down a black hole, never to return. It was just one bad choice and decision after another. And even now in 2026. I have a couple dozen single, great women acquaintances, who have extremely terrible choices in men. Granted it isn’t always men that are bad seeds. I know just as many emotional vampires and users that are women. I do my very best to not fall for their thirst traps. Black holes are areas of space where light cannot escape its pull. I don’t have shine to give to that. However, I still have shine. All relationships decay unless maintained symmetrically. No relationship is immune to entropy or that natural order that things decay from stability into chaos.
One person often:
Freezes the moment.
Idealizes the early spark.
Tries to get back to “when it was good.” If it was good at all.
The other tends to:
Evolve.
Or detaches.
Or becomes realistic.
That’s the second face of love:
Love as nostalgia versus love as adaptation.
Bluntly; I do not hate love or the concept of love.
I hate:
Love as delusion.
Love as projection.
Love as emotional dependency.
Love as identity outsourcing.
Love as obligation.
I respect:
Autonomy.
Intentionality.
Emotional symmetry.
Slow build.
Honest communication.
That’s not aromantic. That’s high threshold. However, to save time, energy and frustration I use the label as aromantic when describing my love life. Aromantic just means feeling little to no romantic attraction to others. Aromantic individuals may still feel platonic love and, while not seeking traditional romance, can form long-term, committed relationships. It is not a mental disorder or a lack of affection. It’s understanding that it isn’t a requirement. It isn’t a need. It is merely a want and my wants tend to get overshadowed by my logical needs over my subjective wants from life.
The observation that matters… When I make statements like:
“Most couples are not happy.”
I am observing:
Emotional imbalance.
Settling.
Codependency masked as devotion.
Fear of being alone.
Or something darker — that love itself is unstable over time.
My phrase here; “Two-Faced Love Theory” could go one of two directions:
Version A – Psychological
Love has two faces: • The love we project. • The love we actually give.
Version B – Existential
Love has two faces: • The intense beginning. • The slow erosion into comfort, control, or quiet resentment.
Or what about the personal?
Version C – Personal
Love has two faces: • The one we show our partner. • The one we keep hidden because we fear asymmetry.
Now do I think or feel part of my choice of detachment from love is:
Protection from burdening someone?
Protection from being abandoned when my health will fail, not if, when and it will?
Or protection from discovering someone loving me conditionally?
Because those are three different anxieties and they shape three different versions of what I have been saying for years about love. When I imagine being in a relationship again — what is the first negative outcome my brain tends to jump to? That’s where “Two-Faced Love” actually lives. I am not detached from the concept of love and relationships. I am realistic. I am grounded in reality. I am protective of my female friends and my own feelings. I am extremely articulate about this. I am emotionally aware of where I am, where I am going and where my final destination will be. I warn all my female friends about projection, about emotional vampires, about self-projection in relationships. Granted, I probably have never done it as articulate, clear and blunt as I have done in this essay, which is more a blog than essay. It lacks talking about this subject in a deep-dive format. This is more like a conversation between AI and myself and I am just summarizing here for you all, what little audience I have.
I say to those that have been scorned and are bitter about love and how they feel. I say the same things. Don’t be like me. It’s not worth it. Yes, hold out. Be firm. However:
Don’t push people away.
Don’t leave the door unlocked either.
Make them work a little or a lot.
Let shine meet shine.
That is not coming from a man who rejects love. That is a man who wants earned love. Not forced. Not based on necessity or bills that need paying. Organically grown and earned. My emotional value is rooted in fear of asymmetrical investment. Emotional vampires will suck all the joy out of love. They suck resources, money, food, goodwill of any kind. They do things for you only because it benefits them. That is not fear of abandonment. That is fear of being consumed.
When I imagine being in a relationship again — what is the first negative outcome my brain tends to jump to? She will eventually project her version of love onto me, and I will either have to shrink to fit it or disappoint her.
Not abandonment.
Not health decline.
Not burden.
Projection.
Control.
Emotional restructuring.
I don’t fear someone leaving. I fear someone trying to rewire me. If I meet the love of my life but she is a devoted Christian. I am not religious and I feel very strongly about that. So much so that I would never give my heart to Jesus to gain her admiration, love, and/or affection. If that were what she needed from me. That would be our last exchange, ever.
My mind has already been rewired:
After ICU.
After blindness.
After a morphine hallucination.
After sobriety.
After watching my therapist die suddenly.
After watching my father die over a 20-year span.
I rebuilt my interior architecture.
I will not allow someone to casually redecorate it in their own projection.
That’s the second face of love in my mind:
Love as admiration.
Love as correction.
I will only ever accept the first.
Most relationships eventually drift into the second. Now here’s where it gets sharp. Every night I go to bed, I know it could be the last time I do. I want to leave something behind for future generations to think about. Legacy competes with intimacy. When legacy becomes the primary focus, relationships tend to feel like:
A distraction.
A drain.
A destabilizer.
A risk to output.
I am already fighting entropy daily with health. My brain calculates:
Time is the only non-renewable resource I actually possess. Health took some. Youth took some. Illusion took some. If love enters my life, it must not take the rest under false pretenses. I do not fear heartbreak. I fear misallocation of my only true resource. Time... Love equals potential instability, but here’s one of my many contradictions. I believe in mutual shine. I just don’t believe in faith that most people are capable of it. That isn’t detachment. That’s selectivity hardened by pattern repetition.
Pattern recognition and repetition work like this:
You are in a hallway full of doors. All the doors are colored differently. You have no prior information about what the colors mean on the doors or anything. It’s completely random to you. You choose red because you just so happen to love the color red, the reason isn't important here just that you love red and red is your choice. You walk through the red door and as soon as you walk through said red door, bam! A sledgehammer smacks you in the face! You are, of course, like, “what the fuck?!?” So, you walk through another red door, same thing. “What the fuck!?!” After a few red doors you get frustrated and travel through some other colors, like blue, green, orange, yellow, white, black, purple, all of them nothing happens. You walk through each door several times and nothing happens, no sledgehammer to the face. But every red door, bam, sledgehammer to the face! One should deduct that the color red represents nothing but pain, suffering, and torment. What should happen is that person now avoids red doors or has some sort of anxiety about red doors or at the very least a judgment about the color red in general. They may even get a crazy emotional depressive episode over it or a panic attack when they see the color red. If the color red represents your bad love interests and you keep walking through red doors knowing this, that specific issue is you. It is you chasing something that doesn’t exist and if it does exist, it comes with conditions like misery and pain.
I am not afraid of a woman leaving randomly. I have had that happen several times and their next guy would end up being a husband. I don’t know what happened to them over time. Friends for a little while, but I can be a bit much with my words and sometimes my point of view is too in people’s faces. Hence why these are here on my own website or on platforms one must make the conscious choice to check out. If you are reading this, you did this of your own free will.
No. I get relationship anxiety from:
She evolves faster.
She grows differently.
She wants acceleration where I need deliberation.
She expects stability I can never truly offer.
She measures value in metrics I no longer prioritize or consider to be important.
That’s not fear of rejection. That’s fear of divergence and divergence is the quiet killer of relationships that usually one or neither of the parties actually see or can think is in play. It isn’t emotional imagination. It is threat assessment. I do not picture candlelight. I picture eventual incompatibility, because even though I am transparent, most do not pay close enough attention or can emotionally understand what is going on in my head at any given time. That’s important.
The Beginning of the fantasy with Idealized Love:
Mutual shine.
Growth together.
Respect.
No projection.
No codependency.
No forced change.
When it’s now Conditional Love:
“Why don’t you earn more?”
“Why aren’t you progressing faster?”
“Why can’t you adapt or pretend like before?”
“Why won’t you come to church?”
“Why won’t you align politically?”
“Why can’t you be who I need you to be?”
“And there it is, the moment, she knew, she fucked up!” McCully Quinn comedy MEME, 9/14/2013
I don’t fear her leaving. I fear the slow accumulation of disappointment. I fear the moment where admiration turns into evaluation. That’s subtle and that’s powerful. Conditional love turns into straight resentment and once that begins it is only hanging on by emotional codependency until even that is no longer filling the void. The only real difference with me is I see this down the line, usually almost instantly, and the worst thing about knowing things that others don’t or cannot see for themselves is the waiting. Always the waiting. If I met a woman who understood my health, didn’t measure income, didn’t require ideological conversion, valued slow growth, and respected legacy over lifestyle — would my brain be quiet? Or would the clock still tick louder than her affection? Would my brain still anticipate her leaving? Or would it finally quiet down? Yet, still that waiting. The clock ticking down till it hits all those zeros. That answer could determine whether it is about external mismatch… …or internal distrust of permanence. A hard truth is the irony. This blueprint exists publicly, accessible, searchable, articulated — and still most who need to read it won’t. Not because it’s hidden. Because asymmetry is rarely recognized by the one benefiting from it. I don’t quit on love. I assign it realistic probability.
“To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake forever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear their tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”
Excerpt from “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art.” By John Keats, between 1818 and 1819.
Two Faced Love Theory by David-Angelo Mineo 2/26/2026 2,642 words