By Nishelle

There are two people in almost every love story.

One reaches.

The other retreats.

Then the first person reaches harder because the second person retreated, and the second person retreats further because the first person reached harder, and before long both of them are standing on opposite sides of the same emotional swimming pool, each convinced the other one is the problem.

I know this because I am the receiver.

Idris is the chaser.

At least, that is what we called ourselves before we realised neither of us had any idea what we were talking about.

I used to think Idris was simply too persistent. He wanted answers when I wanted space. He wanted closeness when I wanted time. If I became quiet, he noticed. If I pulled back, he moved towards me. If I said, “I’m fine,” he had the deeply irritating habit of looking at me as though I had just submitted fraudulent paperwork.

“Are you fine?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“I heard you.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Because I don’t think the answer was meant for me.”

I hated him. Obviously, I was in love with him. These things are sometimes annoyingly adjacent.

What I didn’t understand then was that Idris wasn’t chasing me because he didn’t trust me. He was chasing certainty. And I wasn’t receiving because I was naturally calm. I was receiving because I had learned that wanting someone too openly was dangerous.

That is the thing about people.

We meet someone in the present and judge them by what they do there, while completely ignoring the invisible country they came from.

You see a person who needs reassurance and think, They’re needy.

You see someone who withdraws and think, They’re cold.

You see someone who wants constant contact and think, They’re clingy.

You see someone who needs space and think, They don’t care.

Sometimes those things are true. But sometimes you’re looking at a survival strategy and calling it a personality. Idris had learned early that distance meant danger. I had learned that closeness meant danger.

There we were. Perfect. Two traumatised idiots with excellent chemistry.

His instinct was to move towards the problem. Mine was to move away from it. He thought movement created safety. I thought movement destroyed it.

And because we loved each other, we accidentally activated exactly what the other person was trying to protect. If I went quiet, Idris became more attentive. If Idris became more attentive, I became quieter. If I became quieter, he asked more questions. If he asked more questions, I needed even more space.

We could have kept this going indefinitely.

Honestly, we nearly did. I would tell myself, “If he would just relax, I could relax.” He would probably tell himself, “If she would just tell me what’s wrong, I could stop asking.”

Neither of us realised that we were waiting for the other person to behave differently before allowing ourselves to feel safe. That is the strange dance between the chaser and the receiver.

The chaser thinks, If I can get close enough, I will finally know where I stand.

The receiver thinks, If I can get far enough away, I will finally be able to breathe.

Both are trying to find safety. They are simply walking in opposite directions to reach it. Idris once told me that when he was younger, silence never meant nothing. Silence meant something was coming.

A mood had changed. A door had closed. Someone had become distant. Affection could disappear without warning. So he learned to watch. He learned to notice tone. He learned to detect withdrawal before it became abandonment.

That is how some chasers are made. They become emotional weather forecasters. They can detect a temperature change in a text message.

A period instead of an exclamation mark?

Concerning.

A slightly shorter reply?

Emergency meeting.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You seem different.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I knew it.”

He would probably deny this description. I have receipts. But I understood him differently once I knew where it came from. He wasn’t trying to control me. He was trying to prevent the surprise of losing me. That doesn’t mean every behaviour becomes acceptable simply because it has an explanation.

That distinction matters.

Understanding someone’s history is not the same as surrendering your boundaries to it. If someone grew up believing they had to chase affection, they may need to learn how to tolerate uncertainty without demanding constant reassurance. If someone grew up believing closeness was dangerous, they may need to learn how to communicate instead of disappearing.

The past explains the pattern. It doesn’t get to run the relationship forever. That was something Idris and I had to learn.

Because my past had its own fingerprints. I had learned that needing people could become painful. I had watched affection change. I had experienced the strange humiliation of wanting someone more than they wanted me. I had learned to keep part of myself behind a locked door just in case someone decided to leave.

So I became good at receiving without asking. If someone gave me attention, I accepted it. If someone loved me, I enjoyed it.

But asking for more?

That was different.

Asking meant admitting that I cared. And if I admitted that I cared, I could be hurt. So I developed an elegant little strategy.

I would let people come to me. That way, if they left, I could tell myself I had never chased them. I called it dignity.

Sometimes it was. Sometimes it was fear wearing lipstick.

Idris saw through it.

“You always wait for me to come to you,” he said once.

“You always come to me.”

“Yes.”

“So what’s the problem?”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life proving I can find you.”

That sentence stayed with me. Because I realised something. My version of receiving had become passive. I thought being receptive meant never moving first.

Never texting first. Never admitting I missed him first. Never saying I needed him first. Never revealing more than he had revealed. I had confused receiving with being pursued.

They are not the same thing. Receiving is open. Receiving says, I am willing to let love reach me. It does not say, Love must do all the travelling.

That was a difficult lesson.

Especially because Idris had his own version of the same problem. His chasing looked active, but it was also a form of fear. He thought if he kept moving, nothing could disappear. He thought if he could solve every silence, ask every question, clarify every uncertainty, he could eliminate the possibility of abandonment.

But love does not come with a tracking number. There is no customer service department for uncertainty. Sometimes the person you love is simply tired. Sometimes they need an evening alone. Sometimes they are thinking. Sometimes they are having a bad day that has absolutely nothing to do with you.

And sometimes, yes, something is wrong.

The problem is that the chaser often cannot tell the difference because their nervous system has decided that uncertainty itself is the emergency.

So they ask.

Then ask again. Then analyse the answer. Then analyse the tone of the answer. Then ask why the tone sounded like that.

Eventually the receiver wants to move to another country. Preferably one without Wi-Fi. And the receiver has her own absurdity. Because while the chaser is trying to get closer, the receiver is often creating a test she has not told anyone exists.

If he really loves me, he’ll keep trying.

That is not receiving. That is emotional hide-and-seek with a secret scoring system.

I did this. I would pull away and secretly watch to see whether Idris followed. If he followed, I felt wanted. If he didn’t, I felt abandoned.

Then I would resent myself for needing him to follow. Do you see how exhausting this is?

We were both asking the other person to heal something they did not cause. Idris wanted me to prove that he would not be abandoned. I wanted him to prove that I could be loved without being controlled.

Neither of us could do that for the other.

We had to learn to carry our own histories into the relationship without making the relationship responsible for erasing them.

That is where divine counterpart energy becomes interesting to me.

People sometimes imagine a divine counterpart as someone who arrives and completes the missing piece. I don’t think that is what happened with us.

Idris did not complete me. He confronted me. And I did the same to him.

He showed me where I used distance to avoid vulnerability. I showed him where pursuit had become a substitute for trust. He taught me that space did not automatically mean rejection. I taught him that closeness did not automatically mean security.

We became mirrors, but not the flattering kind. The kind that show you the habit you thought was a personality trait.

That can be deeply romantic. It can also be extremely annoying.

There is nothing quite like falling in love with someone who keeps finding the exact psychological button you have spent years pretending isn’t there.

I would say, “I just need space.” Idris would say, “Okay. How much?” I would become suspicious.

“What do you mean?”

“How much space do you need?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then tell me when you do.”

That was infuriating. Because he was learning not to chase. And I was learning not to disappear. Neither of us was getting to perform our favourite role anymore.

Eventually I learned to say, “I’m overwhelmed. I need tonight to myself, but I don’t want you to think I’m leaving.”

That sentence changed something. And Idris learned to say, “I feel you pulling away and it scares me, but I know that doesn’t mean you’ve abandoned me.”

That changed something too. Neither sentence was particularly poetic. But they were intimate. Because real intimacy is not always grand declarations. Sometimes it is giving someone accurate information about your fear before your fear starts making decisions for you.

That is what I wish more people understood about receiving. You cannot receive love properly if you have decided that the other person must perform perfectly before you allow yourself to trust it.

And you cannot chase love into becoming safe. The chaser eventually has to stop running. The receiver eventually has to step forward. Not because one person wins.

Because the distance between them was never the real problem. The problem was what the distance meant to each of them.

To Idris, distance once meant, I’m losing you. To me, distance meant, I can finally breathe.

We had to create a third meaning. Distance can simply mean distance. Closeness can simply mean closeness. A message can simply be a message. A quiet evening can simply be a quiet evening.

Not every silence is abandonment. Not every pursuit is love. Not every retreat is rejection. And not every person who wants reassurance is needy. Not every person who needs space is avoidant.

Sometimes they are simply people carrying old maps into a new relationship. The work is learning when the map is wrong. I still think Idris is a chaser. He would probably say I am still a receiver.

Maybe we are. But something changed.

He no longer chases me to make sure I won’t leave.

I no longer receive him as proof that I am wanted.

We meet in the middle now. And there is something almost sacred about that. Because the divine counterpart is not necessarily the person who finally gives you everything you lacked. Sometimes it is the person who makes it impossible to keep pretending you don’t need to grow.

The person who reveals the old wound without becoming responsible for healing it. The person who makes you laugh at the absurdity of your own defences. The person who can look at you and somehow say, without saying it:

I know why you became this way.

I know why you are frightened.

I know why you run.

I know why I chase.

And neither of us has to live there forever.

That is where Idris and I finally found each other.

Not in the chase. Not in the retreat.

In the space where neither of us was running.

And for two people who had spent so much time trying to feel safe by moving in opposite directions, standing still together felt almost revolutionary.

I suppose that is what receiving became for me. Not waiting to be pursued. Not refusing to move. Not making someone prove that they love me. Just opening the door. And trusting that if Idris wanted to come in, he could.

Trusting that if he needed to step outside, he could. Trusting that I could remain myself either way. That was the part I had been afraid of all along.

Not losing him. Losing the version of me who needed to control whether he stayed. And when I finally let that version of me go, I discovered something I hadn’t expected.

Idris was still there.

Not because I had chased him.

Not because he had chased me.

Because, for once, we had both chosen to stay.