Love isn’t what you think it is
Love is patient, love is kind? Yeah, right.
by: E.B. Johnson
As the years pass, we form a lot of ideas around the concept of love. More often than not, we come to view love as the Hollywood ideal; a whirlwind of unrealistic hopes and standards clustered into a sea of high expectations.
We view love through the rose-tinted glasses of Hallmark cards and Ginger Rodgers films. We think we know what love is supposed to look like, but when it gets real? Well, that’s when we get disappointed.
Love isn’t patient or kind. It’s brutal, messy, confusing and — often times — short. It’s not always trusting or selfless. Sometimes, it just fails and there’s nothing we can do to change that.
Real love isn’t about shaping someone else or getting hurt or getting validation. True love is a journey and a conscious choice we have to make every single day.
What love isn’t.
The fluffiness of it all.
When we think of love, we think about it as this ethereal thing that just to happens to us — like a lightening strike or a hurricane. We act as though we have no control over our love and we let it come and go (and wreck our lives and our wellbeing) as it pleases.
Love is conscious choice we make, not a magical gift that’s bestowed upon us. It takes work to make love blossom, and it always takes effort to keep it around.
More than the obsession and the butterflies we feel during those first few encounters, love is all about choosing to accept and support someone in the life choices they choose to make. Loving someone can be easy or hard, depending on what we make of it, but it’s a long game that that’s a steady hand and commitment.
Good love should never take more work than you can happily give, though. It’s a tightrope walk that you have to constantly be aware of.
Love isn’t fluffy, it takes a lot of work, but it makes us better for it.
It’s not about shaping someone else.
Many of us fall for people we think we can “change” or “fix”, but the problem with that is that you cannot change anyone; they have to be willing to change themselves.
Often we fall in love with someone and discover they’re not exactly who we need or want. Rather than being honest, and confronting those feelings head on, we develop this idea that we can “change them”.
People are more than the qualities and behaviors they have. Everyone has characteristics that make them annoying or imperfect, but life is not a Sims game in which you can change the personality and characteristics of a person at will.
Real love is loving someone the way they are, no matter how much that may irritate us or rub us raw in all the wrong places. While it might be tempting to try and shape, mold and manipulate the people around you into fitting into your ideals, it’s a dangerous game and one that will leave you lonely and hopeless.
Everyone has a lesson to teach us and often the biggest one is this: you can’t change people and you never will. Let it be. Let it go. Sometimes, real love means walking away when it just isn’t right.
Love shouldn’t be painful.
While love does come with the occasional handful of natural pain, overall, love should not be a painful experience.
You shouldn’t have to put yourself through the rigors and fires of hell just to earn someone else’s love. “Waiting things out” is dangerous when it comes to this type of volatile relationship, and it’s best to know when to walk away.
Being in love with someone doesn’t mean you have to overlook their uglier flaws, and it most certainly doesn’t mean to need to suffer at the hands for someone else just to be accepted. You can love someone through their trials and tribulations, correcting them when necessary, without putting yourself and your emotional and mental wellbeing at risk.
If your relationships is causing you pain on a regular and consistent basis, it might be a sign that it’s not really love at all. Love isn’t without conflict, but it should be without unnecessary pain.
What love is.
Letting go of expectations.
When we’re really in love, we’re able to let go of all our expectations and let our love just be.
Instead of expecting the other person to be smarter or more outgoing, we can set our expectations aside and love our other half for who and what they are.
Acceptance in love is true and absolute, with no expectation of compensation later on down the road.
True love has no expectations. It’s the ultimate “as is” contract. It is unconditional and without limitations. If you’re really in love, stop trying to change the other person. If that’s not acceptable, it might be time to walk away and reflect.
An absence of the petty.
Having “the real thing” has a funny way of making all our pettiest instincts disappear. When you share a genuine connection with someone, all those nasty fears and insecurities seem to flutter away. Rather than feeling jealous or possessive, you feel calm and secure. Rather than feeling envious or fearful, you feel empowered and confident.
True love leaves you reassured in who you are as a person and allows you to let go of those negative emotions that can be so damaging to your internal and external worlds.
Jealousy does not equal love. It never has and it never will. Our insecurities are revealed through our jealousies, but our confidence is displayed in the strength of our love.
No more hide and seek.
People in the midst of genuine love no longer feel the need to hide things from one another. They share their lives openly because they want to, and they’ve learning the going is easier when you can share it with someone else.
Being in love has a funny way of causing us to forget our insecurities and prioritize the needs of someone else. Rather than existing in a total state of selfishness, you come to live in an in-between state of respect that causes you to want to be your best with the other person, no matter what.
When you’re in love, you no longer need to hide who you really are. You’re accepted — flaws and all.
Constant improvement.
Love, in whatever shape it takes, can be one of the most transformative powers on this planet. We would do almost anything for love, including better ourselves, through diet, exercise and even internal growth and development.
Being in love has the power to change us from the inside out, but it takes a conscious choice and a mindful understanding and acceptance of what love actually is.
We cannot change ourselves to gain love, but love will find us when we decide for ourselves that we want to be better.
Love allows us to change our perspective and develop an empathy over time that is absolute and fathomless. When we’re happy, we feel good, and we keep our promises and develop a deep respect for the people and places around us.
Being in love doesn’t mean there are never issues or “off days”, but it does man you’re committed to making those times better when they happen. Love can make us kind and breed in us a compassion that is bottomless. Love is transformative, but only when we are honest with ourselves about what we want and what we have.
Putting it all together…
True love doesn’t just happen like it does in the movies; it takes time, hard-work and commitment to creating something better outside of yourself. Love can be transformative, but only when we realize what it is and what it isn’t.
Love isn’t the whirlwind affair we see on the silver screen. It’s nitty and gritty and raw, leaving us smarting in ways we didn’t even know we could. Love isn’t about shaping someone else, but rather about accepting them (flaws and all) but knowing when to walk away when things no longer work.
Love is imperfect and crazy and brutal, but it has the power to really change us if we give it the chance. True love is something we all should aspire to, but we should remember that it looks different for everyone. If you want to find love, find your trust, communication and respect first. The rest will follow.
