What Unfolds Between Us
A reflection on love, need, and shared freedom through the lens of butterflies rising’s poetry.
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People say they want love.
But often, what we’re actually reaching for is something different—something quieter, more conditional. Security, maybe. Reassurance. A guarantee that the ache we’ve been carrying won’t follow us into the next room.
There’s a moment in butterflies rising’s work that names this dynamic with painful precision:
people say they want love,but they go into relationships asking…what can you do for me?what can i get out of you?who can you be for me?
It’s easy to nod in agreement, to point outward at the culture, the dating apps, the transactional habits baked into modern connection.
I’ve asked these questions too. Not always aloud. Not always with full awareness. But somewhere in me—beneath the desire to be close—has lived another, maybe older desire: to be made whole. To feel safe because someone else knows what to do with my edges. To be seen, yes—but in a way that doesn’t challenge the version of myself I’ve carefully arranged for display.
That’s not love.
That’s need.
And while need is nothing to be ashamed of, it is different from love.
One clings.
The other opens.
The second half of the poem offers a different set of questions:
what is this feeling with you?what can unfold between us?i want to know who you are.
And just like that—everything changes.
From expectation to presence.
From control to curiosity.
From what can you be for me to who are you, and who can we be together?
Freedom lives inside these questions.
Not the loud, defiant freedom of banners and declarations, but a freedom that can only exist between people, not around them. A freedom that doesn’t ask others to contort themselves in exchange for closeness.
We don’t talk about that kind of freedom very much.
We tend to reserve the word for politics, for protest, for borders and ballots and ideologies. And yet:
I am not free unless you are free.
I cannot be my authentic self without allowing you the same space.
There is no deep safety without mutuality.
No true connection when one person is constantly trying to manage, shape, or decode the other.
And, sadly, so many of us learn to do exactly that.
Early on we’re taught love is something to earn, or prove, or perform. We’re taught to present our best angles, to negotiate emotional safety by becoming whatever the other person wants—or demanding that they become what we need.
We enter relationships with quiet scripts already written:
I’ll be this if you’ll be that.
I’ll show up here if you don’t ask me to go there.
What passes between us in these arrangements might look and feel like love—for a while.
But eventually it shows its shape:
Something constrained.
Something conditional.
A performance of intimacy, rather than intimacy itself.
So what does it mean…?
Maybe it means letting someone unfold in real time, without reaching too quickly for a definition.
Maybe it means paying attention to the spaces between questions—the silences where old instincts rise.
Maybe it means resisting the urge to be useful or understood and, instead, simply being with.
Does that mean giving up boundaries?
Does it mean love should be passive, or all-accepting, or endlessly patient in the face of harm?
No.
But it might mean stepping back from the fantasy that another person’s role is to soothe us, fix us, or complete some imagined version of us or our future.
It means asking:
What lives between us that neither of us owns?
What is possible here that wouldn’t exist alone?
These are not comfortable questions.
They don’t offer certainty.
They don’t promise anything.
But they are honest.
And they make room for something sacred—not necessarily in the spiritual sense, but in the sense of what is rare, and quiet, and easy to overlook in a world that rewards fast answers and polished surfaces.
what is this feeling with you?
It’s not a trick question or a trap.
It’s an invitation.
To pay attention.
To listen.
To let love be something we participate in, not possess.
To stop asking what and who someone can be for us—and start wondering what and who we might become together…if neither of us is asked to shrink.
That is the love I want to learn.
That is the freedom I want to practice.
That is what I hear in this poem.
Not a prescription.
Not a conclusion.
Just an opening.
A door.
A breath.
A beginning.
A reflection on love, need, and shared freedom through the lens of butterflies rising’s poetry.
The butterflies rising poem “people say they want love, but they go into relationships asking… what can you do for me?” appears in her poetry collection wild spirit, soft heart. It is also available online.
Artwork inspired by the essay. AI-generated with care to reflect its tone and themes.
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