Love. We hear so much about it. Relationships smother our media at every turn. And here I am, adding to that, offering up an opinion.
When it comes to our generation, there are two very distinct attitudes on love that I see very often. The first is being desperate for love and a relationship. People who orientate their whole life around it. Who are rarely without a significant other. As soon as one relationship ends it doesn’t take long for them to bounce back and into another. The sort that are always sharing EVERYTHING about their significant other on social media (no shame in sharing, I do love seeing cute relationship posts if I'm honest, but you know the type I'm on about, several posts a day of their partner doing something insignificant, or posting about every penny their partner spends on them... it's overdoing it). The other attitude is at the opposite end of the scale, promoting a single life above everything else. The “I don’t need no man, I’ve got me and my career” sort of vibe. Those who fight to push that out into the world, showing people that love and relationships aren’t the only thing that make life worth living.
What I want to offer up is some sort of middle ground. I used to very much be in the second group (pop back to my first post and you'll get my vibe), focused on myself over anything else. And that’s not to diss on that camp, but I sometimes struggle to be open and vulnerable in relationships, and I think that this view may have affected me. Though I agree that it’s incredibly important to make sure you love yourself before trying to love anyone else, as you can’t pour from an empty cup, sometimes this independent & sometimes man-hating view can be overpowering. The whole "men are trash" movement is a little bit toxic in my opinion, as it cultivates mistrust of an entire gender over the actions of few. You have your trust broken by one, whether it be by a family member or your first love, and that side of the internet encourages this fear until its all encompassing, but dresses it up with sassy quotes to make it look like strength. It's propaganda in it's purest form.
I saw a post recently discussing the statistics surrounding what % of relationships end, and basically saying if those were the statistics for surgery nobody would do it because it’s too risky, but we all do it for love. I think promoting this kind of fear is dangerous. You can’t hold back from experiences because it might not end well and you might end up hurt. If you do that (as I have before), you end up missing out on things. One quote I’m now trying to live my life by is:
“If we wait until we’re ready we’ll be waiting our whole lives.”
- (Lemony Snicket).
Though it is to be taken with a pinch of salt, it is important not to live life avoiding things that make you nervous. Sometimes you gotta just bite the bullet to find the best experiences of your life. Say yes more often. Take a chance. Get hurt. Have your heart broken. For it's the lows that make the highs that much better. Protecting yourself from pain is simply limiting your life experiences, and chances are, you'll probably end up getting hurt one way or another anyways, so you might as well live life with no qualms in the meantime.
Maybe I've found myself with this opinion because I'm now in a relationship, but I think I had reached this conclusion far before that. Relationships aren't everything, they're certainly not the key to happiness and probably shouldn't be your priority, but they're another experience, another form of intimate human connection, another level of emotion.
I just want to tell the young girl out there, who maybe is feeling the way I did, that she can love herself, and be happy and confident on her own, and not need a man (or woman), but, at the end of the day, still want someone, and want to experience that side of life. And there's no shame in that. It doesn't make you any less of the strong, independent person you are right now. So take the leap, and worry about the consequences later, cause life begins outside your comfort zone.
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Lots of love,
