Love in this Life

“Sometimes you get the love you want, sometimes you get the love you need.”

_{-Author Unknown, found on a wall inside Inxpot, Keystone, CO}

Maybe love isn’t what this hopeless romantic had always thought it was. I grew up with this vision of what true love looked like, and, of course, it was shaped by love stories I devoured in both novels and movies. I wanted to be swept off my feet by somebody who just understood exactly how to make me happy and speak to my heart the moment he looked into my eyes. If he’s my soulmate, shouldn’t he already know everything about me? Shouldn’t it be that he’d never hurt me? Wouldn’t it be eternal bliss, every second that ticked by after meeting him?

I honestly believed that incredibly unrealistic version of true love. Damn those love stories, creating a world that’s honestly only fit for fantasy. And poor guy who would ever fall in love with me – what kinds of shit expectations are those?!

A friend told me last week, after reading my last blog, laced with words born from pain and jaded discontent, that she thought love between two people was far more like two circles, separate at first, slowly coming closer together until they begin to overlap.

Over the past week, after thinking, processing, mulling things over, journaling, and talking with others, I’ve decided that I did, in fact, have it all wrong.

True love is when the other person understands they’ve hurt you and they break down in the middle of a very public place because they’re overwhelmed by the understanding of the extent of that hurt.

True love is not only understanding how the other needs to be treated in order to feel love, but actually leaving their comfort zone and putting in the intention and effort to make sure the other feels loved in their own language.

True love is thinking of the other first, and sometimes even sacrificing to put their happiness above your own.

True love is including the other into your own world, shedding walls and baggage, in order to be completely raw and vulnerable – which is probably the most terrifying thing in the world to do.

My soulmate is the one willing to put in the work. The one who decides to study me like I am a course he wants to ace.

This. This is true love. It takes work. And ever so much understanding. And grace. And, did I mention work? It isn’t easy. It isn’t effortless. And to have that expectation is foolish. And then it leads to frustration and disappointment.

The better you understand how someone ticks, the better you can love them. And that is the true beauty of love, I think. To see my partner mold to my needs because he’s learned who I am, and how I am…that’s a thing of beauty.

Soulmates decide to grow together, to lean in on one another. It isn’t that one will never hurt the other, but that when they do, it’s seen as an opportunity to deepen the love. It’s a lesson then learned, where layers of old pain can be shed, and the soul is bared.

Love is realizing you want to be so transparent that your partner is capable of seeing all of you – the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly – and you don’t run away from that, despite how scary it is, because you know you can trust them with every bit of you, past, present, and future.

Soulmates don’t give up on each other. True love doesn’t turn away from each other. No matter how ugly it gets. Because these types of partners consistently choose one another and understand that together, they can conquer any challenge.

I’ve weathered quite the storms in my life – and again rode some rocky waves quite recently that once again left me jaded. I’ve waited to receive the love I’d always hoped I’d one day feel, and honestly had begun to lose hope it could exist.

And you know, perhaps the love I’d always dreamed of having, that effortless and immediate love I thought could exist, is actually best left for the fairytales. This may not be the love I’d always wanted, but maybe that’s because this is the love I’ve always needed.