I was talking to my friend Rachel about her abusive ex and the new man in her life. I said, “It must be very difficult to love again when love has, so far in your life, taught you that it’s nasty and hurtful?” And then I realised…

I didn’t feel loved as a child or for most of the time that I was with Tom. I was abused, neglected and hurt, yet none of the people involved ever actually said they loved me. (Tom used to say it but stopped once we moved in together, apart from once.) A childhood spent never being told you’re loved, never being held or hugged, is hard and lonely, but if they never told me they loved me, then what they did wasn’t love.

What I always thought was love wasn’t.

Even greater is the realisation that I haven’t actually experienced love yet – and I’m okay with that – because this means that everything I believed to be love wasn’t. I have all of that to look forward to. To finally discover what love is, and not what it isn’t. I know what love isn’t. I’m ready to know what love is.