Is It Love or Leverage?
Many people mistake control and emotional dependency for love, but learning to recognize the difference between genuine connection and subtle manipulation is essential to healing and freedom. We discuss it here!
Photo Credit: Wavebreakmedia via iStockPhoto.com
By: Jamila Gomez
Not everyone who sticks around loves you.
Some people stay because your wounds serve them. Because your silence benefits them. Because your self-doubt makes them feel needed, important, or superior. And sometimes, what we call love is really just leverage dressed up in affection.
It’s not always easy to tell the difference—especially if you grew up believing love was something you had to earn. If your earliest experiences taught you that love came with conditions, sacrifices, or expectations, then it makes sense why being overextended in a relationship might feel normal. Familiar, even.
But there’s a cost.
You start mistaking attachment for love. You start confusing being needed with being valued. And you start accepting bare minimum effort as deep connection because you’re emotionally invested in who someone used to be, or who you hoped they’d become.
Ask yourself this: when you started to heal, did they pull closer—or pull away?
When you found your voice, did they celebrate your power—or shrink in discomfort?
When you stopped needing them to validate you, did they support your growth—or start subtly punishing you for it?
Real love doesn’t flinch when you evolve. It doesn’t see your healing as competition. It doesn’t require you to stay broken in order to feel close.
But leverage? Leverage loves the imbalance. It feeds off your guilt, your gratitude, and your fear of being alone. It creates emotional IOUs—those quiet expectations that say, “You owe me for being here.” It disguises itself as loyalty, then uses that loyalty as a leash. It keeps you dependent, unsure, apologizing for outgrowing the box they put you in.
There are people who won’t know how to relate to you once you’re no longer the version of yourself that needed them. People who don’t know how to love you when you’re clear, centered, and free.
And while that may feel like rejection, it’s really revelation.
We were taught to call a lot of things love that were really just fear, control, and performance. We weren’t taught to ask: Do I feel seen here? Do I feel emotionally safe? Do I feel like myself in this relationship—or just a role I’m expected to play?
Because if your light makes them dim, if your joy makes them distant, or if your peace makes them uncomfortable—what you had wasn’t love. It was leverage. It was control. It was comfort at your expense.
The love that’s meant for you will expand with you. It will want your freedom, not your dependence. It will love the real you—not just the version it could manage.
So, the next time it feels hard to tell the difference, sit with this question: Is it love, or is it leverage?
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