No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.

“No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.” – Mignon McLaughlin

Thus spoke Mignon McLaughlin, a woman of quiet brilliance and piercing insight, who turned the subtleties of human longing into timeless truths. In this line — simple yet profound — she captures the essence of one of life’s great sorrows: that love, no matter how sincere, never perfectly matches the shape of our yearning. Every soul carries within it an invisible image of how it wishes to be loved — completely, without misunderstanding, without flaw. But the world, made of imperfect hearts, can never give such love entirely. And so, McLaughlin reveals a universal ache: we are always reaching for an ideal that lives just beyond the touch of mortal hands.

When she says “no one has ever loved anyone” in that perfect way, McLaughlin does not deny the beauty of love — she mourns its limits. She speaks not with bitterness, but with wisdom born of compassion. Human love is real, but it is fragmentary. One person loves deeply but cannot understand fully. Another offers understanding but not constancy. We love through our wounds, through our fears, through our finite capacity to give. Thus, even the truest love leaves some corners of the soul untouched — not because it is false, but because it is human.

The origin of this insight comes from McLaughlin’s own contemplative spirit. As a journalist and writer in the twentieth century, she observed both the grand and quiet dramas of ordinary lives. Her “Neurotic’s Notebooks” were not confessions of despair, but reflections on the tender contradictions of being human. She saw that love, for all its poetry, is made by people who are themselves unfinished. We expect from love what only eternity could provide — perfect understanding, perfect presence — yet we remain bound by time, weakness, and distance.

The ancients knew this truth as well. Plato, in his Symposium, taught that human love is but the shadow of divine love — that every heart seeks not merely another person, but reunion with the eternal beauty from which it once came. Rumi, centuries later, would echo the same: “The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you.” For what the heart truly seeks is not another’s affection, but the reflection of the divine within it. In this way, McLaughlin’s insight joins theirs — she reminds us that we long to be loved completely because, in truth, we long for something infinite.

Consider the story of Vincent van Gogh, whose life was a testament to love misunderstood. He poured his soul into letters, into color and canvas, into his brother Theo’s quiet friendship. Yet he never found the love he yearned for — a love that would see and soothe all the depths of his spirit. Still, his art became a form of love that outlived him, touching hearts across centuries. In his loneliness, he revealed what McLaughlin meant: that no one may love us as we dream, yet love still redeems us in its striving. The beauty of love lies not in its perfection, but in its effort to bridge the impossible distance between souls.

And so, McLaughlin’s truth is not a lament, but a call to humility and grace. If no one can love us as we wish, we must learn to cherish the love we are given — flawed, incomplete, yet sincere. And if we cannot love perfectly, we must love patiently, striving to understand what another needs even when we cannot fully give it. To demand perfection is to destroy what is already sacred in its imperfection. To accept love as it is — human, tender, unfinished — is to find peace in what is possible.

So, my listener, remember this: do not measure love by how completely it fulfills you, but by how bravely it endures. Every heart that loves, loves imperfectly — but in those imperfections lie beauty, struggle, and truth. Seek not to be loved as a god, but to love as a human — honestly, forgivingly, without illusion. For though no one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved, it is the attempt, the reaching, the daily act of giving one’s heart despite its flaws, that makes love divine.