These past few years of my life has taught me that when it comes to relationships, Love is never enough. Yes it's true...
It's true that to be in a healthy relationship with someone you have to at least feel love for that person, but is it enough for you to stay and make things work? The answer is No...
Is love enough to keep us happy as well? Aren’t compatibility and love, two very different things? Love isn’t a sure cure for every problem that we have in our relationship. It is so not the final solution for our pains and struggles in life. This is why it is necessary to not overestimate the power of love and keep it real. While you believe that “you need love”, along with it, you need respect, care, friendship and humility as well. Here are reasons why love is not enough to keep a relationship going:
Compatibility is a different word.
It is possible for two people to be in love but not be compatible enough. You can fall in love with anyone for the little things they do, but it doesn’t mean you can be a perfect couple for the rest of your life. While love might be a strong emotional power inside a person which can move them to a great extent, it is compatibility which you need to rely on to live a happy life together.
You need to have some amount of same opinions or share some common interests to be happy in each other’s company. There are disastrous relationships where partners abuse each other, where there is a little respect, where one person always brings the other one down, where a partner isn’t happy about your achievements, but that doesn’t mean that there was no love. But are such relationships worth living?
Relationship problems can’t be solved by love.
When the families don’t get along, when there is a lot of distance, when there is no time to give each other, there is some love which makes you believe that you are going to overcome all the issues and be happy one day. But that doesn’t happen, my friend. It just seems that nothing happened when two people in love meet each other after a long time, but the issues usually remain the same and they create havoc when you are not around each other. Break-ups are bound to happen if other less “significant” things seem to slide under your eyes, with you being well-aware that there are problems.
Respect is highly needed to make things work. What do I mean by respect?
You deserve Someone you think highly of, and who thinks highly of you. Someone who doesn’t always understand your opinion or agree with it, but will defend your right to have it and speak your mind. Someone who will respect you enough to be honest with you, even when it’s difficult. Someone who will talk through fights with you instead of with their friends over drinks or all over social media. Someone who knows you can do anything you set your mind to, and will cheer you on. Someone that you won’t ever badmouth. Someone that you’re proud to call your partner. Someone whose individuality you admire deeply.
Care is another thing that we often leave out.
You need Someone who wants to work at things. Someone who wants to help out around the house, and do things that are hard and not fun. Someone who isn’t afraid of the sticky situations, who isn’t going to avoid them just because it’s easier. Someone whose happiness and comfort you value as dearly as your own, someone you would sacrifice your own happiness for, just to give them a moment of peace or respite. Someone who cares enough about your bad days to make sure you have a good ones.
You can’t always make sacrifices on the name of “love”.
When you are in love, it is essential that you love yourself too. But at times, we tend to give the other one so much importance that we ignore our needs to keep them happy. Does it work in the long run? Well, no. One day you will realize that you must have self-respect to keep yourself happy and no matter how many sacrifices you end up doing to keep your relationship together, it will fall apart if the other person is not doing the same and if you both end up giving up on your own wishes just to fulfill what the other wants. You shouldn’t lose your own identity while you are in a relationship, no matter how much in love you both are.
Is there a strong friendship?
“Pyaar Dosti hai”, aka love is friendship, and the advice that people give to keep relations strong is that the two people should be best of friends. This doesn’t mean that if you talk to them as a best friend or spend time with them the similar way, it will be enough, but rather you should be able to tell them where they are going wrong or which “negative behavior” you wouldn’t tolerate.
Since you say “no” to your best friend easily over things you don’t want to do, you can do the same when your partner asks you the same. You should notice if their behaviors are good enough for you, the kind of talk which you wouldn’t put up with if it wasn’t a romantic relationship.
Would you make your best friend stay in your house if they have no care about the maintenance? Would you ask for passwords of your best friend’s accounts? There are times when you lose your self-esteem being in terrible relationships, only for the sake of love! Is it good enough, then?
As you can see, Love isn’t listed anywhere on the list, because it’s comprised of all those little things under the umbrella of the other bigger things. At the end of the day, everything we do for our partners and everything we come to together comes back to compatibility, respect, care and friendship. It does seem daunting to find someone who will have the same level of respect for us as we will have for them. Or care just as much as we do about the state and health of the other person as well as the relationship. It is ridiculously hard, and way over complicated considering how big our pool of possibilities. However, it is OKAY to hold out for that. It is okay to make some relationship errors in order to find what you want.
It is especially okay for those errors to be public. It is okay to love someone publicly and unabashedly, even when other people say it’s wrong. It is okay to keep plugging away at something, when other people can see the effort isn’t reciprocal. You will hurt and fall and feel pain. It might be embarrassing, people will go on about how they told you so, and the hurt pride at having to admit you were severely delusional about someone you were effusive of all over your Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and twitter will make you want to destroy your smart phone forever. You’ll live, though.
When you do finally get to the end of the road, and find the special someone you’ve always been meant to be with, there will be serious skeptics. Wave them away and enjoy being in love, because you have worked hard for this. You deserve this.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, you can send me mail @ nuellaroberts1@gmail.com.
Thanks for reading. Have a wonderful weekend ahead
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