A post online claims that men fall in love only once and that every relationship afterward is a substitute for that original bond.
When I saw this on my Instagram feed, curiosity led me into the comments. Some women said they didn’t care, as long as a man provides. Others admitted they’ve never truly been in love, so the idea felt irrelevant to them. Still, I believe there is a layer of truth worth exploring.
Many men who have deeply bonded with a woman don’t simply “move on” emotionally. Instead, they often spend the rest of their romantic lives unconsciously searching for the feeling they once experienced. Not necessarily the same woman, but the same emotional imprint. This isn’t always about obsession or inability to let go; it’s about imprinting and attachment. Once a man experiences a certain level of emotional resonance, that becomes his internal reference point.
Love, in its most complete form, is not one-dimensional. It’s made up of three essential components: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Passion creates desire and attraction. Intimacy builds emotional safety, vulnerability, and connection. Commitment is the conscious choice to stay, invest, and build. When all three are present at once, the bond becomes deeply encoded. Sternberg’s “Triangular Theory of Love”
If that kind of love is lost through separation, betrayal, or timing, many men don’t recreate it from scratch. Instead, they compare future partners to the memory of that original emotional experience, often without realizing it. This can lead to relationships that function well on the surface shared responsibilities, provision, companionship but lack the same depth of emotional fusion.
That’s why some women sense they are loved, but not chosen in the same way. And why some men remain emotionally guarded, nostalgic, or restless even in stable relationships. It’s not always that they can’t love again it’s that their definition of love was set early, and everything after is measured against it.
This perspective doesn’t excuse emotional unavailability, nor does it diminish the value of later love. But it does explain why love can feel rare, why bonding carries such weight, and why unresolved emotional attachments quietly shape how people show up in relationships long after the first “great love” has ended.
But not all men have experienced love in its complete form. Some have never known what it feels like to have passion, intimacy, and commitment aligned at the same time. This absence shapes them just as profoundly as a deep first love shapes others.
Men who never experienced this kind of bond often don’t have an internal reference point for it. Without that emotional blueprint, love becomes conceptual rather than embodied. They may understand love in theory, what it should look like, how it’s described, but not in felt experience. As a result, relationships can feel transactional, performative, or compartmentalized.
For many of these men, early attachment disruptions play a role: emotional neglect, inconsistent caregiving, abandonment, or growing up in environments where vulnerability wasn’t safe. Love becomes associated with loss, pressure, or responsibility rather than mutual nourishment. In these cases, withholding parts of themselves feels protective.
Men who’ve never known consummate love, which consists of, passion, intimacy and commitment may appear emotionally detached, overly rational, or ambivalent in relationships. They might say they’ve “never been in love,” or they may redefine love in narrow terms, loyalty, provision, sex, or companionship, because integrating all three components feels unfamiliar or overwhelming.
Interestingly, these men may not mourn a specific person, but they often carry a quiet longing, a sense that something is missing, even if they can’t name it. This can lead to serial relationships, emotional avoidance, or settling into arrangements that feel safe but unfulfilling.
The Sacred Shift | Intuitive Guidance With Suzette Lindo 