Love, Trust & a Little Baggage by Candidly Kim

An Honest Conversation About Relationships, Insecurity, and Learning to Love Differently

BY KIMBERLY HREZO  |  MONTHLY COLUMN

Hi, I’m Kimberly Hrezo, and I’m thrilled to welcome you to my new column in LA Living Magazine.

Each month, we’ll explore the beautiful, complicated, sometimes messy world of relationships. We’re talking love, sex, trust, intimacy, communication, insecurities, and yes, all that emotional baggage we tend to bring along for the ride. Most importantly, we’ll talk about what it really takes to keep choosing each other long after the honeymoon phase has faded.

Think Carrie Bradshaw, but with 15 years of therapy under my belt and perhaps a few fewer pairs of Manolo Blahniks.

Now, before we get too comfortable, let me make one thing clear: I’m not a therapist, relationship expert, or certified love guru. I’m simply a woman who decided she wanted to break the cycles she grew up with and create a different kind of love story.

For the past 19 years, I’ve been building a relationship I’m incredibly proud of. It hasn’t always been effortless. We've had therapy sessions, relationship seminars, countless books, plenty of prayer, and more than a few hard-learned lessons.

And perhaps one of the biggest lessons came before we even said, ‘I do.’

When Love Meets Insecurity

Picture this: The wedding was planned, the invitations were mailed, and I was preparing to marry the man I loved more than anything.

Then came a fight. Not just any fight, but one that made me question whether our wedding would happen at all.

The issue? My jealousy.

At the time, I hadn’t learned how to feel truly secure in a relationship. Neither of us had grown up with the kind of healthy relationship we wanted to create together. Somewhere along the way, I had convinced myself that trusting someone meant leaving myself vulnerable to getting hurt.

During that argument, my fiancé looked me in the eyes and said something I will

never forget.

‘I don’t know if I want to start our future this way. This isn’t what I want for the rest of our lives.’

My heart sank.

‘Do you want the ring back?’ I asked.

It was one of those moments when everything suddenly becomes painfully clear.

Here I was, deeply in love with a man who had given me no reason to doubt him, yet I let my fears dictate how I treated him. I was holding him accountable for things he hadn’t done, simply because I was afraid they might happen someday.

And in that moment, I made a decision.

I would no longer make the man I loved pay for someone else’s mistakes.

The Beautiful Freedom of Letting Go

Something remarkable happened when I began separating my past experiences from my present relationship.

It was as though my world shifted from black and white into technicolor.

For the first time, I could appreciate the relationship standing right in front of me instead of constantly anticipating what might go wrong.

I began to understand that while I couldn’t rewrite my past, I could choose how much influence it would have over my future.

And that realization changed everything.

We have one precious life. One opportunity to experience love, connection, happiness, and all the beautiful moments in between. Yet so many of us spend that time protecting ourselves from heartbreak that hasn’t even happened.

We prepare for disappointment. We anticipate betrayal. We build walls around our hearts, believing they keep us safe.

But sometimes, those walls keep out the very love we’ve been searching for.

Are You Loving the Present or Reacting to the Past?

It makes me wonder how often we unknowingly bring yesterday’s pain into today’s relationships.

Maybe your struggle isn’t jealousy.

Maybe it’s a fear of abandonment that makes you hold on a little too tightly.

Maybe you learned to keep your feelings to yourself because, growing up, no one seemed interested in listening.

Or perhaps somewhere along the way, you were made to believe that expressing your needs meant being difficult, demanding, or simply too much.

Whatever the pattern, we all carry pieces of our past into the relationships we create.

The question is whether we let those experiences teach us or control us.

“Am I fully living in the relationship I have today, or am I making the person I love pay for something someone else did to me long ago?”

A Little More Love, A Little Less Fear

That’s a question worth asking ourselves.

Because the truth is, love requires vulnerability. It asks us to trust, communicate, grow, and sometimes challenge the stories we’ve been telling ourselves for years.

We cannot change what happened to us. But we can change how we move forward with those experiences.

And perhaps that’s where the most meaningful kind of love begins.

My hope for this column is simple.

I want us to have the conversations we don’t always feel comfortable having. The honest ones. The uncomfortable ones. The ones that make us laugh, reflect, and occasionally recognize a little too much of ourselves.

We’ll talk about the beautiful parts of relationships, but we won’t shy away from the complicated ones.

Because lasting love isn’t about finding a perfect person or creating a picture-perfect relationship.

It’s about learning, growing, showing up, and choosing each other, even when life gets messy.

If something I’ve learned over the years helps you approach love with a little more confidence, a little more compassion, and a lot less fear, then this column has done exactly what I hoped.

Here’s to loving more freely, laughing a little louder, and leaving some of that unnecessary baggage behind.

Love, Kimberly