There are so many things she wants to tell you, and sometimes they spill from her like an avalanche.

Because she’s passionate, but stoic too.

Her love is engraved onto her beating, red heart, but it’s not always visible on her face or evident in her voice.

She dreams of grabbing you, almost violently, and kissing you like she did when she was 20. But she’s not 20.

So she places the forks on the nicked, antique dining table. She pours chocolate-flavored almond milk for your daughter. She wipes toothpaste from the corner of your lips before you leave for work (she knows you would never notice it). And these are the tiny ways that she shows you her love.

Yet she loves like the sea.

She’s stormy and, yes, even volatile. She’s fierce and she’s powerful—and she knows it, which makes her that much more of a dynamic force.

She’s also fluid.

She’ll love you forever and she’ll let you drift here and there while you live your own passionate life.

She wants to buoy and support you, but she doesn’t want to own you—and she doesn’t want to be owned either. Because her throbbing heart is something she wants to offer freely, and she longs to earn yours rather than demand it.

But sometimes she will demand.

She’ll command displays of your love and frequently require that you show such reassurance and appreciation, but preferably on your own. (She knows this is conflicting.) And then, if her reassurance and praise do not come, she becomes resentful.

She grows hardened and chilly on the outside because on the inside she’s withering and falling slowly apart. She is strong and fluid and fierce, but she’s also fragile and tender and forever a soft-hearted child. (Aren’t we all?)

Some might play the calloused exterior better than others, but all of us in varying degrees house little children in our hearts, wanting love and affection and happiness too.

And if, on occasion, you stroke her quiet forehead and kiss her pink cheek and graze your thumb down her jawline, while looking into her blue-green, ocean eyes and tell her that you love her and why, she’ll make you happier than you would have imagined.

Because, the thing is, you do own her—when she gives her heart, she does so completely and part of it will always remain in your care. So care for her.

Nurture her gentle sweetness and learn to embrace her sometimes stony surface. (She is not made of stone, after all.)

No, she’s made of evening star wishes and groggy morning kisses and clean forest air. And, though crisp and fresh and open to receiving and reciprocating love, she’ll not be able to help from holding her passionate self back, at least from time to time.

Remember this when you feel overwhelmed by a seemingly sudden volcanic mood: it has been building in her for a while.

She doesn’t keep her emotions from you, so much as she tries with her serious, honest spirit to be less demanding and finicky. But she’s both of these things and she’s worth the effort to understand. (Because no one wants to understand you better than she.)

And how do you love a heart like this? With everything you’ve got.

Photo: Jesus Solana/Flickr.

This article first appeared on elephant journal.

The post How to Love a Sometimes Serious, Always Passionate Heart. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.