WHAT IS LOVE?

Throughout the month of February, particularly around Valentine’s Day, love is often presented through a familiar cultural lens. In much of Western culture, it looks like plush teddy bears, extravagant bouquets of roses, chocolate-covered strawberries, and candlelit dinners. Television and film reinforce this narrative with portrayals of love that are dramatic, volatile, or purely physical—images many are taught to equate with romance and affection. While these expressions are not universal across cultures, including in the communities we serve in Thailand, the underlying message is often similar: love is intense, consuming, and emotionally charged.

For survivors of trafficking and exploitation, however, the pursuit of understanding what love truly is can be deeply confusing, frightening, and at times re-traumatizing.

In the United States, many women who have experienced sex trafficking or sexual exploitation were harmed by someone who was supposed to love them: a parent, an intimate partner, or a trusted friend. When the very individuals meant to offer protection and care instead inflict compounded pain, betrayal, and mistrust, survivors are left grappling with a profound question: how does one learn to love again? Many women who walk through our doors carry heavily guarded hearts for this very reason. If “love” was the context in which their exploitation occurred, how can it ever feel safe again?

Survivor and advocate Harmony Dust addresses this tension by reframing the question survivors often ask. Before asking who can be trusted, she invites survivors to consider a deeper question: What is love? Importantly, Harmony is not offering a definition shaped by romance, culture, or past experience, but one rooted in the apostle Paul’s description of the love of God Himself—a love many survivors have never encountered in human relationships.

In Free to Thrive, a curriculum she developed for survivors on their healing journey, Harmony encourages women to reclaim trust in their own discernment by evaluating relationships through a clear, values-based definition of love. Survivors are invited to replace the word “love” with the name of the relationship that occupies the greatest amount of their time or emotional energy, allowing them to assess whether that relationship reflects patience, kindness, respect, and safety.

The definition is as follows:

“Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Tools like this help survivors navigate complex and often confusing moments throughout the healing journey. While love may not look like grand gestures or romantic ideals, it does look like consistency, respect, and honor. It looks like relationships that celebrate growth rather than control it.

These distinctions create space for forward movement and lasting healing—healing that restores a survivor’s ability to recognize healthy love, experience safety in connection, and ultimately believe that they are worthy of being truly and deeply loved.