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In my almost thirty years of living and half of that lifetime spent dating or in a relationship .I haven’t learnt everything but I have learnt a lot. During and after every relationship, I have made an effort to learn what I could’ve worked on or learnt so that I don’t do it again.
Here is what I have learnt:
1. Love is not enough.
When I was a little girl, I would watch movies that implied that once people discovered love, their lives would be complete. I adopted this mentality and I learnt in my early twenties that living with this mindset would only disappoint me. An early memory of this is when my ex-fiancé would call me demeaning words and cheat on me. When I would confront him, he would apologize and beg for forgiveness because he claimed to love me. Because I was in that mindset, I believed him; only to see him continue to behave like that over and over. You see, he needed more than love for me; he needed to have respect, compassion and kindness for me too. Until he learnt to have those other 3 factors, he would continue to treat me the way he always had.
2. Love is powerful.
Have you ever loved someone so much that the very sight of them makes your heart smile? I have, many times because love is powerful. Love can temporarily alter your mental health and have an impact of how you think, speak and act. In my opinion, there is nothing more powerful than love.
3. Love cannot be replaced.
I honestly believe that the reason why we suffer in this life is because we spend our lives running away from love, for fear of being vulnerable and we replace it with un-necessary things, like: money, possessions, games and emotions. We do this because we want to have power over love; we deeply fear that love can have power over us and it makes us suffer even more. I’ve come to learn that love is not meant to be replaced; but, meant to be embraced.
4. Embracing love is worth it.
The only thing that I have ever really regretted is not telling someone that I loved that I love them. In my last year of High School, I fell madly-in-love with one of my best friends and I could tell that he felt the same way about me. People thought that we were a couple because we were always together. Whenever I thought about telling him my feelings, I became afraid that I would be rejected like I was before and it stopped me from embracing how I truly felt and telling him how I felt. After High School, we went our separate ways and he began dating his (now) wife. I felt sincere regret about what had happened. Ultimately, I wanted the best for him but I couldn’t help but question if I was the best for him once I found out that he was getting married a few years ago. I made a promise to always tell someone that I loved them because feeling regret is worse than knowing that that person knows how you feel about them.