Actor Neena Gupta has always spoken candidly about her life, relationships, and regrets. In an interview, she opened up about her first marriage to Amlan Kusum Ghose, which lasted less than a year.

While recalling her early days with her first husband, she shared how college classmates once sabotaged her movie date by telling her mother, saying, “My first love was with an IIT guy, whom I went on to marry eventually. My college fellows used to be very jealous of me then. Their parents wouldn’t allow them to wear spaghetti straps, and they saw me as a modern woman. Woh salwar kameez-chunni waale the aur woh mujhse jalte the (They wore salwar kameez and dupatta, and they were jealous of me).”

Neena continued, “This one time, my then-boyfriend and I decided to go watch a film. I revealed my plans to one of those girls by mistake, and then they went and told my mother that main ek ladke ke saath picture dekhne jaa rahi hoon (I am going to the cinema with a boy). My parents didn’t let me go. Back then, we didn’t have phones, so I couldn’t inform him. He kept waiting for me.”

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But when it comes to love, Neena offered a strikingly vulnerable reflection. “I’ve never been in love. The love that I see in movies and read in books, I’ve never experienced that in real life. Nobody has loved me like that. Toh main bhi kaise kar loon? Karna bhi toh padhega na kisi ko. Mere peeche koi paagal nahi hua (Then how can I do it? Someone has to love me like that. No one ever went crazy for me),” she said. 

Reflecting on emotional intimacy and communication, Neena said she believes people struggle to open up about vulnerabilities in relationships. “I often tell Masaba to keep her personal emotions to herself and not talk about it to anyone. I tell her not to talk about her past. The idea is to be in the present,” she told Showsha.

So, why do some people go through life without feeling the kind of romantic love they’ve read or heard about, and is that necessarily a negative experience?

Psychologist Raashi Gurnani tells indianexpress.com, “I often come across individuals who, like Neena Gupta, express that they’ve never experienced the grand, all-consuming love depicted in books and films. While romantic love is a universally idealised concept, not everyone experiences it with the same intensity or in the same form. Some people may have attachment styles shaped by early childhood relationships, particularly those with avoidant or dismissive-avoidant types, which prevent them from fully opening up to or recognising romantic love. Others may not have encountered a relationship that sparked that emotional resonance.” 

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She adds, “Importantly, this is not necessarily a negative experience. Life can be rich and fulfilling through friendships, purpose, self-love, and other meaningful connections. The absence of a ‘storybook romance’ doesn’t equate to emotional deficiency or failure; it simply reflects a different emotional trajectory.”

Can the absence of being deeply loved by someone affect a person’s capacity to love others in the same way?

According to Gurnani, our ability to form and express love is strongly influenced by how love has been mirrored to us. If a person hasn’t been seen, valued or emotionally held by someone else, it can create a learned emotional inhibition or fear of vulnerability.

“This is especially true for those with a history of emotional neglect or abandonment, who might develop internal schemas that they are unworthy of deep love. These schemas can act as emotional roadblocks, making it difficult for the person to both receive and give love with depth and openness,” concludes the expert.