Even at eighteen, I feel that I’ve learned a lot about love. This is the part where you scoff and say that I’m barely even an adult but, as someone who spent the majority of their teenage years in relationships, I’ve learned to navigate the highs, the lows, and the downright messed up.
I’m on my 5th relationship – can I get a ‘hell yeah’ for serial monogamy?! I’ve loved, and I’ve learned, and I’ve lost. Yet, I think – finally, after all this time – I’ve figured out what love is for me. How it feels to truly love and to be loved. To know how a functional relationship works; not the rose-tinted depictions of toxicity in the media – I’m looking at you, Ted and Robin from How I Met Your Mother. We’ve all thought we were in love with someone. Crushes spurred on by the toxic romanticisation of idolising someone, not as who they are, but as who you wish they were. It seems all too common to spend years infatuated with someone who makes your heart fester like an open wound. Such ideals are so pervasive; it can take years to detangle yourself from the shame of wanting – and deserving – something more. Even when you find it, the remnants of that trepidation can still cling like static electricity.
In these conversations, it’s easy to get caught up categorising what love is and isn’t; whether it’s in the secret weekend getaway, or a surprise coffee in the mornings. But the feeling will never be tangible, or effable. It’s individual. There’s something about looking into someone’s eyes and feeling that you’re at home, that’s perhaps enough to convince even the most sceptical person that love is real. Now to contradict myself; to be in love isn’t that crashing wave of overwhelming obsession that we’re told it is. It’s thinking of them when you hear their favourite song. Remembering their favourite colour, or how many sugars they like in their tea. It’s the contentment of knowing someone loves you so unconditionally that you can just be your most true and authentic self and wishing that person nothing but pure, unadulterated happiness. It’s quiet. It’s still. Yet it leaves you utterly in over your head. However, love isn’t always romantic. There’s nothing tying these things exclusively to romance- in fact, every one of your friendships should revolve around unconditional love, authenticity, and the desire to see them smile.
I think that’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learnt. Chasing romantic love pales in comparison to cementing that same care in your friendships and relationship with yourself. We’re taught to idealise and to strive for the romantic, rather than finding that same unconditional care in our other relationships. With friends. With ourselves. And that’s not to write off the importance of romance in individual people’s lives but to assert that, after a particularly nasty breakup at the start of 2020, I’ve realised the importance of nurturing friendships. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but we seem to be bombarded by a necessity to strive for romance, with people feeling they’re ‘lacking’ if they don’t have an ‘other.’ Herein lies the problem – it’s a common theme to possess that string of toxic, failed relationships. Each harder to leave than the last, as we flail hopelessly, searching desperately for the stability that we’re promised in romance.
What’s perhaps even more important is that in occupying the space between sixteen and eighteen, my love bloomed. Not Eros, a fiery and familiar beating of hearts, but slowly, delicately… a self-romance, an affair with all that will be. In falling in love with myself I’ve found comfort, hope, and stability. I found the beauty within life itself, Loving yourself is taking five extra minutes to find peace in your morning coffee, laughing harder with your friends, surrounding yourself with positive affirmations which soothe the soul and quiet the mind. In loving yourself, you negate all need to satisfy that craving with affection from others. ‘Self-love’ has these connotations of facemasks and bubble baths- but, for me, it’s compassion. Having self-compassion is accepting – and even celebrating – all that you are and ceasing in the endless war that wages in the name of self-improvement; you know the one, it manifests in green smoothies, debilitating HIIT workouts and that critical voice that just refuses to let you live.
Self-love is both criminally underrated and crippling overdone. Practice compassion, self-respect. Finding ten minutes in your day to acknowledge and to sit with your emotions. Find what you love- pursue it, whether it’s cross stitch or researching funny Medieval laws. Invest time into yourself and I promise your relationships will follow suit. After all, self-love might just be your most ‘covid-friendly’ option this Valentine’s Day.