How Do You Hold Onto Love? (The Answer Killed My Spiritual Ego)

Ten days ago, I wrote about love without containers. The radical act of choosing your partner daily, knowing they’re free to leave.

Four days ago, I wrote about the dissolution of the lover. When the self who loves dissolves, leaving only love itself.

Today, I’m writing about the trap between these two realizations—and why so many of us get stuck there.

[Currently researching communities in Costa Rica while Mercury stations direct. Sometimes you need to change your whole context to see what’s been right in front of you...]

Here’s the paradox that breaks most conscious relationships: We’re so afraid of cages that we refuse to create any structure at all. We call this “freedom,” but it’s actually just sophisticated avoidance dressed up in spiritual language. The spiritual bypass has become our favorite escape route from the discomfort of real intimacy.

You can’t hold water with clenched fists (control). But you also can’t hold water with completely open hands (avoidance disguised as “letting it flow”). You need the middle way—cupped palms, creating form without force. Structure without suffocation. Clarity without control.

A Necessary Distinction: Which Love Are We Talking About?

Before we go further, let’s get clear. The Greeks knew what we’ve forgotten: not all love is the same.

Agape is universal, unconditional love. The love of humanity. The love that sees divinity in all things. This love needs no containers, no polarity, no structure. It just is.

Philia is the love between friends. Loyalty, shared values, mutual respect. This love needs trust and time but not passion or polarity.

Eros is what we’re talking about here. The love that includes desire, passion, the dance of polarities. The love that creates and destroys. The love that most of us are actually trying to navigate when we talk about relationships.

[The spiritual bypass often happens when we try to apply agape principles to eros dynamics. You can’t transcend your way out of desire. You can’t meditate your way into sustainable passion...]

When I say you can’t hold water, I’m talking about eros. When I say you need to water the polarity, I’m talking about the magnetic charge between lovers. This isn’t about loving everyone unconditionally—it’s about the specific alchemy that happens between two people who choose to dance in the fire together.

Here’s the trap: When eros gets difficult (and it always does), we try to “elevate” it to agape. “Let’s just love each other unconditionally.” “Let’s transcend the need for labels.” “Let’s move beyond desire into pure spiritual connection.”

But that’s not evolution—it’s bypass. You’re mixing universal truth (we are all one) with relative truth (we are also separate beings with distinct energies and desires). When you try to live only in the absolute, you kill the very thing that makes eros alive: the tension, the longing, the delicious otherness of your beloved.

The spiritual world has gaslit us into thinking that having standards, boundaries, and needs in romantic love is somehow “unspiritual.” But eros without conditions isn’t eros anymore—it’s just a dissociated performance of universal love that leaves everyone feeling empty.

That’s why so many “conscious relationships” feel passionless. They’ve tried to agape their way out of the heat, the friction, the gorgeous specificity of “I want YOU, and I want you to show up THIS way, and if you can’t, that’s information, not a spiritual test.”

[Looking around at all these “tantric” workshops teaching people to “love without attachment” while their actual relationships are sexless and conflict-avoidant. We’ve been trying to water plastic flowers with universal love when what we need is the messy, particular, demanding dance of eros—specific, embodied, and deeply human.]

Now that we’re clear on that, let’s talk about how we’ve confused spiritual transcendence with emotional avoidance.

The Great Confusion: When Spirituality Becomes Bypass

We live in an age where every relationship dysfunction has been rebranded as a spiritual journey. Emotional unavailability becomes “protecting my energy.” Inability to commit becomes “flowing with the universe.” Fear of intimacy becomes “maintaining sovereignty.”

After 18 years in one relationship, I re-entered the dating world in 2018 to discover this new lexicon. Everyone was a “divine masculine” or “sacred feminine.” Every breakup was a “tower moment.” Every toxic dynamic was a “karmic lesson.”

And the most seductive phrase of all: “Let’s not label anything.”

It sounds so evolved, doesn’t it? So free. So conscious. No boxes, no cages, just pure connection flowing in the eternal now.

[My body knew better. Every time someone said “let’s not define this,” I felt that slight contraction. The exhaustion of existing in relational fog. The way my nervous system could never quite settle...]

What I discovered through years of living in this ambiguity: We’ve confused spiritual freedom with emotional avoidance. We’ve mistaken fog for flow. We’ve turned our fear of commitment into a philosophy of consciousness.

Here’s the distinction that changed everything:

Labels = Intention + Clarity
“This is what we are.” “This is what we’re exploring.” “This is where I stand.”
Labels create shared reality. They’re acts of courage, not cages.

Containers = Control + Ownership
“You must.” “You can’t.” “You belong to me.”
Containers are fear structures. They’re attempts to prevent loss by building walls.

The spiritual bypass is thinking you can have love without definition. But definition isn’t imprisonment—it’s recognition. It’s having the courage to say: “This is what’s here between us.”

How You Water the Polarity (Instead of Grasping at Water)

Love is like water. The harder you grasp, the more it slips through your fingers. But if you cup your hands—creating form without force—the water pools and stays.

This is the paradox: You need structure to hold the formless. You need clarity to hold the mystery.

Most modern relationships fail this test. We either grasp too hard (control) or refuse to cup our hands at all (avoidance). We’re so afraid of the first that we choose the second, calling it freedom.

But here’s what actually creates sustainable attraction—what I call “watering the polarity”:

The Solar pole offers clarity, direction, presence. This isn’t domination—it’s the courage to stand in your truth and offer a clear point of navigation.

The Lunar pole offers receptivity, flow, emotional depth. This isn’t submission—it’s the power to receive, transform, and reflect energy back enhanced.

When someone says “let’s not label this,” they’re not protecting the polarity—they’re collapsing it. Without clarity, there’s no structure for energy to flow between. Without definition, everything becomes the same grey fog.

[The irony? In trying to avoid being trapped, we create the exact dynamic that kills attraction. Polarity needs difference. Fog creates sameness. Mystery needs a container to dance within.]

You water the polarity by maintaining your pole while honoring theirs. Daily. Consciously. With radical clarity about what is, and radical openness about what might be.

The Twin Flame Trap (And Other Myths We Use to Avoid Growth)

Scroll through Instagram’s spiritual corners and you’ll find endless memes about “twin flames” waiting for their “divine counterpart” who’s temporarily “stuck with a karmic.”

It’s the perfect modern myth: You’re not being rejected—you’re in a sacred story. They’re not emotionally unavailable—they’re “running from the intensity.” You’re not in an anxious-avoidant loop—you’re in a “twin flame journey.”

[The algorithm knows our wounds better than we do. It feeds us exactly the mythology we need to avoid facing what hurts...]

But here’s what these myths actually do: They dress up dysfunction as destiny. They turn red flags into “divine tests.” They transform the simple work of relating into an epic spiritual narrative where you’re always the protagonist waiting for union.

The truth is simpler and harder:

• That person who won’t commit isn’t your twin flame—they’re avoidant

• That intensity you feel isn’t cosmic destiny—it’s activation of old wounds

• That push-pull dynamic isn’t sacred polarity—it’s dysregulation

Real love doesn’t need mythology. It needs presence. It needs truth. It needs two people brave enough to show up without costumes.

What Love Actually Is (Hint: Not What the Memes Say)

Love is water. You can’t grasp it, own it, or force it to take your preferred shape. But you can create conditions for it to flow, pool, and nourish.

Those conditions aren’t mystical. They’re practical, metaphysical:

Love needs clarity to feel safe
Not knowing where you stand isn’t “surrendering to the mystery”—it’s destabilizing. The nervous system can’t relax in ambiguity. Love grows in the safety of shared reality, not in the fog of “let’s see what happens.” (That’s not trust in divine timing—that’s fear of making a choice.)

Love needs polarity to create attraction
Two people collapsing into sameness kills desire. Two people maintaining their distinct energies creates sustainable heat. But notice how the spiritual bypass works here: “We’re twin flames, we’re the same soul,” or worse, “We should love without needing anything from each other” (that’s agape, not eros). You’re using universal love principles to avoid the vulnerable need and desire that makes eros real. Real polarity requires difference, not merger. Real passion requires wanting, not transcending want.

Love needs truth to build trust
Every small lie, every withheld truth, every secret creates a micro-fracture. These compound over time until the foundation cracks. But we spiritualize deception too: “I’m protecting their energy,” “It’s not the right time,” “The universe will reveal it when ready.” No—you’re just afraid of consequences.

Love needs sovereignty to stay fresh
Codependence kills love slowly. Two whole people choosing each other daily creates dynamic connection. But watch how quickly “sovereignty” becomes another bypass: “I need to be sovereign” often means “I’m afraid of real intimacy.” True sovereignty includes the capacity to be vulnerable.

The Practice: Watering Polarity Without Drowning in Mythology

So how do we actually maintain love without falling into either trap—the cage of control or the fog of avoidance?

First, recognize the difference between sacred tension and toxic loops

Polarity creates tension—that delicious magnetic pull between differences. Dysfunction creates chaos—that exhausting push-pull that leaves you dizzy. But here’s the bypass: calling toxic dynamics “sacred geometry” or “karmic healing.” No—learn to distinguish the charge of attraction from the activation of trauma. One builds; the other depletes.

Second, name reality without demanding outcomes (or spiritualizing avoidance)

Say what is: “I feel deeply connected to you.” “I want to explore this.” “I need more clarity.”
Don’t dictate what must be: “We have to be together.” “You must commit now.” “This has to work.”
And definitely don’t hide behind: “Whatever the universe wants.” “If it’s meant to be.” “I’m just flowing.”

The first creates safety through truth. The second creates pressure through control. The third? That’s bypass—using surrender as an excuse to avoid choosing.

Third, maintain your energetic pole consistently (not perfectly)

If you’re naturally more directive (solar), offer presence, clarity, and grounded leadership—not domination.
If you’re naturally more receptive (lunar), offer depth, intuition, and emotional wisdom—not withdrawal disguised as “going within.”

The moment you abandon your pole to chase or please, the polarity collapses. But notice the bypass: “I’m working on my divine masculine/feminine”—while using it as an excuse to not show up authentically right now.

[After years of “doing the work” in isolation, I’m learning: integration happens in relationship, not in meditation caves...]

Fourth, stop mythologizing difficulty (and stop trying to agape your way out of eros problems)

That person who’s “not ready” isn’t going through a “dark night of the soul” that will lead them back to you. That on-again-off-again dynamic isn’t the universe teaching you “unconditional love.” Stop right there—unconditional love is agape. In eros, conditions matter. Standards matter. Boundaries matter.

The spiritual bypass loves to say: “I should love them without expectations” (that’s agape). “I should accept them exactly as they are” (still agape). “Love doesn’t need anything in return” (definitely agape). But eros DOES need things: presence, passion, polarity, commitment to the dance.

When you try to solve eros problems with agape solutions, you don’t transcend—you dissociate. You don’t evolve—you evacuate. Sometimes people are just unavailable. Sometimes connections don’t work. And admitting that isn’t a failure of your spiritual development—it’s honoring the relative truth of human relating.

The Final Teaching: You Can’t Hold Water

Here’s the ultimate paradox of love: The moment you try to grasp it, it escapes. The moment you try to define it completely, it dies. But the moment you refuse to acknowledge it at all, it dissipates into nothing.

Love is water. It needs a vessel to hold it, but the vessel can’t be sealed. It needs form to give it shape, but the form must stay fluid.

This is why both extremes fail:

• Total control (the sealed container) suffocates love

• Total ambiguity (no container at all) lets love evaporate

The middle path—clarity without control—creates the conditions for love to both stay and flow. Like cupped hands under a waterfall: structured enough to hold, open enough to receive, conscious enough to know that what you’re holding is always in motion.

You water the polarity not by forcing two people to be different, but by each person having the courage to be fully themselves. The solar expressing as solar. The lunar expressing as lunar. Not as rigid roles, but as dynamic energies that dance. This is eros—it needs the tension of difference.

Stop trying to dissolve into oneness (that’s agape). Stop pretending you don’t need anything from your partner (still agape). Stop “loving them free” when what you really mean is “I’m too scared to ask for commitment” (agape as bypass).

Eros needs. Eros wants. Eros chooses THIS person, not all beings. And when two people can maintain their distinct energies while staying present to each other? When they can offer clarity without demanding guarantees? When they can be specific in their desire without being possessive in their holding?

That’s not just love. That’s alchemy. That’s eros doing what eros does—creating worlds through the meeting of opposites.

The Question That Changes Everything

Stop asking: “How do I make love stay?”
Start asking: “How do I create conditions where love wants to pool?”

Stop asking: “How do I avoid being trapped?”
Start asking: “How do I offer clarity without building cages?”

Stop asking: “Are they my twin flame?”
Start asking: “Are we both present, truthful, and maintaining our poles?”

The quality of your questions determines the quality of your love. And the quality of your love determines the quality of your life.

[Three weeks until Costa Rica. Sometimes the heart needs new geography to remember what it knows. Sometimes the only way to find clarity is to change your entire context...]

Your Practice: Catching the Bypass in Real Time

This week, become a spiritual bypass detective in your own life. Notice:

• When you say “I’m just flowing” instead of “I’m afraid to choose”

• When you say “divine timing” instead of “they’re not available”

• When you say “protecting my energy” instead of “avoiding intimacy”

• When you say “twin flame journey” instead of “anxious-avoidant loop”

• When you say “working on myself” instead of “terrified of being seen”

• When you say “I should love unconditionally” instead of “I have needs that aren’t being met”

• When you say “love wants nothing” instead of “I’m afraid to want”

Especially catch yourself when you try to agape your way out of eros challenges. When things get hot, difficult, or demanding, notice if you suddenly become “spiritual”—talking about universal love when what’s needed is specific, embodied, passionate presence.

Then try this: Have one conversation where you strip away all the spiritual language. No “divine” this or “sacred” that. No “unconditional” anything. Just plain, naked truth: “I want this.” “I need that.” “This turns me on.” “That shuts me down.”

Watch what happens when you stop dressing reality in cosmic clothing. Watch your body relax into the simplicity. Watch how much easier everything becomes when you stop trying to transcend being human.

Keep choosing truth over mythology,

• Cian

P.S. - Real love doesn’t need Instagram memes to explain it. It doesn’t need cosmic justification. It just needs two people brave enough to show up without masks, clear enough to name what’s real, and sovereign enough to choose it daily. Everything else is just stories we tell ourselves to avoid the beautiful, terrifying simplicity of actually relating.