Stay with someone who treats you as if they had waited their whole life to find you. It is not intensity, it is awareness. It is someone who knows what it takes to build a bond and does not take it for granted. When a person has gone through real loneliness and has crossed dark periods, they learn to value the presence of another without games or half measures. They do not look to fill emptiness with noise, they look for connection with meaning. And that shows in how they listen, in how they respond, and in how they stay.

Only someone who has felt despair can recognize that shadow in others. They do not judge it, they do not minimize it, they do not try to fix it with easy phrases. They understand it because they have lived it. That experience does not make anyone better, but it does make them more aware. And when two people meet from that place, the bond is different. It is not born from need, it is born from recognition.