Why Being ‘Put Up With’ Is My Love Language Now

For the longest time, I believed love languages were neat, polished little categories you could check off like a multiple-choice quiz. Words of affirmation? Cute. Acts of service? Lovely. Quality time? Adorable. But somewhere between growing up, messing up, figuring things out, and watching people show up for me anyway, I realized my real love language isn’t on any official list. It’s not in a self-help book. It’s not a quiz result. It’s something I had to learn the hard, human way. My love language is being put up with.

Now, before you imagine this as some sad little concept born from low self-esteem, let me stop you. Being “put up with” isn’t about believing you’re too much. It’s about noticing who loves you through the entire spectrum of you—your moods, your chaos, your quirks, your weird thoughts at inappropriate hours, your high-maintenance tendencies that you pretend are low-maintenance, and all the other Erin-specific features that somehow keep the people who love me hanging around anyway. The older I get, the more I realize that being put up with is not a downgrade from love—it’s actually the most practical, everyday expression of it.

Relationships, friendships, family dynamics, and every connection we have rely on a kind of steady, gentle endurance. Not endurance like suffering—endurance like staying. Showing up. Choosing someone even when they’re not being their easiest self. When someone can handle your imperfections and still want to be there, that’s real affection. And when someone can make you feel safe in your complicated, messy honesty? That’s intimacy.

I didn’t always understand this. In my younger years, I thought love meant grand gestures, sweeping moments, or Insta-worthy declarations. I thought love was shiny and romantic, something that always felt good and sparkling and cinematic. But it turns out love is much quieter than that. Love shows up when someone still cares even when you’re not at your best. Love persists when you’re overwhelmed, confused, grumpy, exhausted, or spiraling into unnecessary panic over things that won’t matter in 20 minutes. Love says, “I’m still here,” even when you feel like you’re a lot to handle.

Being put up with means someone has looked at the full picture of you, including the parts you’d prefer to crop out, and said, “Yeah, I still choose this.” And that—more than any bouquet, ring, or poetic text message—feels like love to me now. Because being put up with means being understood on a level where someone knows your chaos, not just your charm.

I think a lot of us spend years trying to present the best version of ourselves. We edit our personalities the way we edit photos—brighten the good parts, soften the rough edges, hide the odd angles. We want to be likable, lovable, acceptable. But eventually, you get tired of the performance. You get tired of curating yourself. And the best relationships you have are with the people who don’t need you to try that hard. The people who sit with you in the mess, who laugh at your weirdness instead of judging it, who stay even when you’re tired, overwhelmed, or completely unraveling. Those people are giving you the gift of being put up with—and if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

I’ve learned that being put up with is a two-way street. It’s not just about me being tolerated; it’s about choosing to stay with others when they’re not exactly sunshine either. We all have days where we’re moody, irritable, or inexplicably emotional. We all have moments where our brains feel like malfunctioning Wi-Fi networks. We all have times when we shut down, freak out, or overreact. Love isn’t about being perfect—it’s about seeing someone else’s imperfect and saying, “I get it. I’ve been there. I’m still here.”

When I look at my relationships now, I notice how much the subtle, unglamorous parts matter. The friend who listens even when I’m rambling. The person who laughs when I’m clumsy instead of rolling their eyes. The one who understands that sometimes my anxiety makes me read too much into things. The people who don’t mind that I require a blanket, three beverages, and full emotional support to relax. The ones who know I need a minute before responding, or that I get socially overwhelmed, or that I text back in bursts of chaos and silence. These are tiny, daily acts of love. They’re not romantic gestures—they’re endurance, patience, and acceptance wrapped into one.

Some people think being “put up with” sounds like settling. I don’t see it that way—not anymore. Because real love requires effort. It requires forgiveness. It requires the willingness to keep showing up even when someone is being the quirky, complicated, beautifully imperfect human they are. It means you don’t just love who someone is on their best day; you also love who they are on their worst day. Being put up with means being valued beyond perfection.

There’s also something deeply healing about it. When you realize people stay—not because you’re pretending to be easy but because you’ve allowed yourself to be real—it changes you. You stop panicking about being too much. You stop shrinking yourself to be lovable. You stop apologizing for being human. Being put up with teaches you to accept love, not as something earned by flawless behavior but as something you deserve simply for existing.

Some of the deepest connections of my life grew stronger during moments that weren’t pretty. Moments where I cried for reasons I couldn’t explain. Moments where I pushed people away because I was overwhelmed. Moments where I fell apart, shut down, or made mistakes I’m not proud of. The people who stayed through those moments didn’t stay because I was impressive—they stayed because they cared. Their patience was love. Their compassion was love. Their willingness to see the messy parts of me and still think I was worth sticking around for? That was love in its most unfiltered form.

And because of that, I’ve learned to cherish the people who put up with me. Not tolerate—cherish. Because being put up with is a sign of emotional safety. It means I can be myself without fear of being abandoned. It means I can tell the truth without worrying someone will walk away. It means I can be human—messy, inconsistent, complicated—and still be loved.

It’s become my love language because it’s become the way I recognize who’s safe for me. Who’s my person. Who’s my people. Love languages are meant to tell us how we feel loved, and being put up with is the feeling that hits the deepest for me. It’s like someone saying, “You don’t have to earn my affection by being perfect. You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to impress me. I’m here because I like you—not the edited version, but the real one.”

Looking back, I can see how my relationships changed when I stopped trying so hard to hide my flaws. I used to worry that if people saw the whole me—the anxious parts, the unsure parts, the overthinking parts—they’d decide they’d had enough. Instead, the people who mattered stayed, and the people who didn’t weren’t meant for me anyway. Being put up with became a filter I didn’t even realize I needed.

Now, when I think about the idea of love languages, the traditional ones still matter. Of course they do. But the one that means the most to me is the one that isn’t pretty or poetic or easily packaged. It’s the love language that lives in the everyday, in the mutual emotional endurance of two imperfect humans choosing each other despite everything. Being put up with means being loved in the way that matters most—without condition, without performance, without fear.

And if you’re someone who feels the same way—someone who knows the comfort of being accepted even in your messy, chaotic reality—then just know you’re not alone. You deserve people who put up with you. You deserve people who stay. You deserve a love language that reflects who you are, not who you think you should be. You deserve a love that’s patient, a love that’s steady, and a love that says, “I’m here, even when you’re not easy.”

So yes, being put up with is my love language now. Not because I think I’m too much, but because I finally understand what real love feels like. It feels like being known. It feels like being accepted. It feels like being chosen again and again, even on the days when you’re a walking emotional hurricane. And honestly? That’s the kind of love I’ll take every single time.