I have been writing a lot of listicles lately – I wanted to get away from that and write something that has been on my mind and a big part of my life. It also is more than likely on many other people’s minds as well.
Love is hard. Being in love is hard. Making love work is hard. I have come to realize that love is not like storybooks and fairytales. Not exactly, anyway. I want to share my experiences with what I thought was love vs. what love is to me now and what it takes to make that work in a healthy way. I want to write something raw and real for me. I do touch on abuse, so please do not read if that will possibly trigger you. I want this to be positive and powerful, not hurtful to my fellow powerhouse ladies.
Let me start with this:
Love does not mean one thing and it does not have a set of rules.
When we are little, we think love is a man sweeping us off our feet, saving us from all our problems with a smile and a castle, and marrying us within the hour and a half it took the movie to end. I hate to be the barer of bad news, but that is 100% not reality. I’m honestly glad it isn’t. However, it has made it a lot harder for me to understand what love is supposed to look and feel like.
For me, love used to be a blurry idea. My parents were never particularly affectionate toward each other while I was growing up. Then they got a divorce when I was around 14, so it was hard to know what to be looking for when searching for “the one”. A side problem is young girls thinking they have to find their prince charming ASAP and that they can’t be something without that.
Stories from older girls were no help either, flaunting how much their boyfriends loved them when they had bought them expensive gifts or had “make-up sex” to apologize for hurting them or cheating. I never wanted to fall victim to that sort of false love. It is easier said than done. Men being the “boss” in a relationship is a concept most women see (or saw) as normal; men being the “boss” is a concept I thought was normal.
In high school I had a string of bad, short lived, toxic relationships. These included body shaming, constant verbal abuse, cheating, and at one very low point, physical abuse. All before and during the age of 17. None of these relationships were like books I was read, movies I saw, or Disney dreams I sought to come true. They were quite the opposite. Why did they hurt me? What did I do? Why are they only lasting 2 months? What should I change? Love is not gifts, it isn’t forced, it isn’t sex, it isn’t being hit/kicked, and it certainly isn’t serving your boyfriend.
Side note: There are many men who are nothing like this and I have the utmost amount of respect for them, keep being kings to your queens, or kings to your kings!
The effects of these bad relationships were deep and lasting. I thought I wasn’t worth love, that it was my fault, that this is what is supposed to be happening, that I deserved this. Now, rational me knew these to be false but something deep within doubts that. I gave up. I was scared. And I was broken down. I wish I had an article or blog post or PSA to read that told me that isn’t normal, isn’t okay, and it isn’t love.
Flash forward to my first year at Millersville University (which happened to be last year). I was still down on myself a lot, even though I projected a happy, bubbly, sarcastic persona all the time. I truly believed that I couldn’t find love, that even if I did, they would bore of me eventually, or worse, I would become my parents and be unhappy for a long time and end in divorce. I’m still scared of that sometimes.
However, a ray of sunshine appeared in my life. His name is Andrew. Andrew and I have been together now a little over a year and actual love is hard work. Being in love with someone is not always easy or pretty or smooth; there are serious bumps in the road. Love for me now is being seen and being loved by someone for all of who I am and me loving them the same in turn. It is about communication, understanding, and partnership.
Here are a few tips I have for a healthy and happy relationship:
(Of course, I still had to include a list)
- Make sure your expectations are realistic
- Communicate often and openly – don’t hold things in and do not lie
- Have separation from each other – make sure you are still taking care of you
- Don’t compare your past to your present
- Laugh all the time
- Respect each other’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, and differences
- Be mindful of each other and know the boundaries
- SUPPORT EACH OTHER
- Show affection and express intimacy in a respectful, safe environment
- Have patience and empathy
- Love your partner without conditions or retaliations
Being in love, in actual, healthy love, is hard work and a commitment to each other. It is about balance and making sure you are on the same page with one another. Loving someone else, like how I love Andrew, does not mean it is void of arguments, obstacles, hardship, and compromise. It simply means you are willing to do what needs to be done to make it work together. Being in love is not a fairytale and it isn’t easy, but it is extremely worth it once you find it.
I do not want to keep seeing girls, young women, and mature women being put through these bitter, emotionally taxing, unhealthy cycles. Love is hard, love is work, love is a commitment, love is an equal partnership, love is worth the energy. Abusive and toxic relationships are not worth the energy and therefore cannot be love.
This was hard for me to write about in a such a public way, but it is important that we all understand our own worth and our own power. It was also important to me in a way to be able to share this and hopefully help others. I am not going to lie and say that sometimes these thoughts don’t still haunt me or creep into my head, but the point is to know when to step away from their hold on you and step into your own.
Until next time,
HCXO, Maddie Rose