Ahh love it’s something that all of us dream about, but what do we really know about it?
Starting at a young age we all dream about finding our “prince charming” and having that story book romance.
Well, I’m here to tell you that’s just unrealistic.
Now I’m not the romance expert or anything like that, but starting at a young age we have had these unrealistic expectations of love shoved in our face. We have been groomed to believe that love is in the big gestures and that if the guy doesn’t stand out in the rain and serenade us with a dozen red roses then he obviously isn’t madly in love with us. This simply isn’t true (plus the only guy I want serenading me is Justin Bieber).
Truth is that most of us will have truly beautiful love stories, they just won’t be like the ones we were taught to look for.
I don’t think anyone truly prepares us for what love actually is or the commitment that you make by falling in love with someone. We are taught that we fall in love and everythings perfect, but love takes work and it’s different for every person.
Love is a scary thing. I mean you’re giving your heart to someone else and trusting that they won’t break it. You stay up late at night and share your life stories and you get to know this person on a deeper level. Scary right?
For college students especially it’s a weird topic because some people can’t wait to fall in love and be in a relationship and others love the single life or are simply scared to let someone into their life. I’m here to tell you there’s nothing wrong with either of those things. Commitment and letting someone into your life takes time and it is something that each person has to figure out through their own experiences. Some people are more simply ready than others and that’s completely okay. I feel like fear of commitment is frowned upon, but in reality it’s normal and in fact completely understandable. At some point we just need to let a little faith and believe that someone is worth giving our heart to.
So this brings me to the question, what is love?
Maybe love is in the small day to day details that we overlook. It could be in the way someone knows exactly how you take your coffee, how they randomly tells you how beautiful you are or when they send you random YouTube links to songs they knows you’ll enjoy. It could be when they brings you food at the library because they know you have a lot of work, or just in the way they listens to your rants without complaing and gives you advice.
Love someone that makes you laugh, who will look at stars with you at night and then get up the next morning and watch the sunrise. Love someone who will give you a piggy back ride when your legs are tired, who can make you smile on even the worst days.
Gestures like these may be small, but they say so much about how you really are loved. So unless you plan to have a guy pull up to your door in a horse drawn carriage (if you are, then you go girl!) we all need to ditch the fairytale perspectives and let our own love stories take over in our own time.