An episode of Sex and the City once told me that you get two great loves in your life, two loves that shake you to your very core, two loves that change your entire perspective of life, two loves in which you will never be the same. At the ripe age of 21, I have had those two earth-shattering loves—leaving me only to hope that I am one of the “lucky” ones who gets to have a third, and a fourth, or maybe even a fifth. And though I don’t necessarily buy into this idea of a love quota, in the words of my dearest Carrie Bradshaw, “I can’t help but wonder,” is there a limit to how much love we can feel in a lifetime?
Days after recent breakup, I had convinced myself that I would never feel love like *that* again—that love that met all the clichés: can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t think straight. And in the moment of our final goodbye, I feared nothing more than this “two great love” limit holding true. Was this it? Was this very last time in my life that I would feel this head over heels in love? And though I haven’t found my next great love quite yet, I have a sneaky suspicion that two life-changing relationships just isn’t enough to teach us what “great” love really means.
With my first love, our relationship taught me how to be a girlfriend, how to be an emotional confidant, how to be a support system. While my second “great love,” taught me that it was possible to wildly and passionately love someone with every fiber of my being. But isn’t it absurd to suppose that I have learned all I need to know about love in two year-long relationships? Isn’t it complete insanity to accept that I was done with new love and new beginnings in my early twenties simply because there is (supposedly) a limited supply of great, core-shaking relationships out there in the world? And if this idea is so absurd, why then, after every tragic breakup, are all we so fearful that we will never find *that* love again?
Maybe it’s insecurity. Maybe this idea of limited love really has seeped in to our perceptions of love and relationships. And maybe, just maybe, we’ve all talked ourselves into a depression because we’re convinced that we only get two great loves—and most have us have already spent our two. Perhaps this is why we still text our exes, and try to repair relationships beyond healing, because we’re afraid we let one of our two great loves go, and without them we’ll be doomed to a life of loneliness.
But I refuse to accept this love quota. If I’ve learned anything from my own two “great loves,” I’ve realized that one person can only teach you so much. And after my two serious relationships, my learning is far from over. I have more to learn about love. I have more to learn about sex. And I most definitely have more to learn about myself. And I simply couldn’t do that without another “great love” in my life. So here I am, waiting for my next core-shaking relationship, confident it will arrive—and you should do the same.