5 Reasons Conrad’s Love For Belly Is The Blueprint For What You Deserve
Love that lasts doesn’t always arrive in a neatly organized or perfect way. It doesn’t always follow the rules, or make sense. Love that lasts weaves through grief, through the ache of becoming and the confusion that comes with it. Love that lasts survives silence and distance; it endures, it waits — even when waiting hurts, even when waiting breaks its heart.
That is what makes Conrad and Belly’s story so beautiful. That is why we love their love. Their story is proof that the most tender and most fated kind of connections aren’t always flawless, but they are loyal, they are rooted.
So, when you think about the kind of love you deserve, maybe the truest blueprint is the kind Conrad gave to Belly.
1. He loved her in every season of who she was.
Conrad didn’t just witness Belly when the world began to notice her — he had been celebrating her, protecting her, and quietly loving her long before anyone else. His love stretched across summers and stages of growth, it stretched across awkwardness and glow-ups and every version of Belly that came to exist. And isn’t that what genuine connection is? Isn’t that the kind of love that endures? Someone who recognizes you in all of your forms — the unfinished ones, the unpolished ones, the awe-filled ones. Someone who chooses you, someone who honors you, in every season of your becoming.
2. He put her joy above his pride.
It would have been so incredibly easy for Conrad to fight for Belly when she turned her heart towards Jeremiah, but he didn’t. He stayed quiet, swallowing his own pain, his own ache, because her happiness mattered more than his ego. Love like that is rare. It doesn’t grip or demand more from you; it gives the bond space when necessary, it takes a step back. True love doesn’t make you feel trapped. It allows you to bloom, to grow, even when it hurts, even when that growth might lead you away from it.
3. He showed up when it mattered most.
Conrad wasn’t perfect.
He struggled under the weight of his own grief, his own fear, and his own defenses. But when Belly needed a soft landing — when her world was cracked open, when she needed something steady to hold onto, he was always there. When she was fighting with Laurel over the wedding, when she was breaking down in the shadows of Susannah’s illness, when she felt unseen — Conrad showed up. He anchored her. That is what real love is. It is not flawless in its consistency, but it does hold within it a devotion that refuses to abandon you when it matters most, a devotion that endures, no matter what.
4. His love ran deeper than timing.
Timing never quite aligned for Conrad and Belly, but his love was never lost within the waiting. He yearned for the day they would both get it right. He yearned for the moment they would beat the odds, the moment they would get their happy ending. You saw it flicker in stolen glances, in pauses that lingered longer than they should have, in the ways he carried his feelings for her like a quiet truth even when he couldn’t speak them out loud. Real love isn’t dictated by convenience. It weathers silence, it weathers distance, it weathers circumstance. The love you deserve isn’t fragile — it’s rooted deeply enough to survive the seasons that try to defeat it.
5. He chose her — fully, and completely.
Despite all of the detours, despite all the misunderstandings, despite all of the pain — it was always Belly. Beneath the walls, beneath the hesitation, beneath the fear of breaking something sacred — it was always her. She was his safe place. She was his home. His love wasn’t a sudden revelation, it was a return to what had always been there. That’s the love you deserve. Not the one that makes you doubt, not the one that cracks when things get hard, but the one that is certain, the one that is steady, and the one that is unwilling to let you go.
