Relationship Advice: Three Bitter Truths About Love
When you are dating and looking for a partner, you should be guided not only by your heart but also by your mind. Love is not enough
Three Bitter Truths About Love
The problem with idealizing in love is that we develop unrealistic expectations about what love actually is and what it can do for us. These unrealistic expectations then sabotage the very relationships we value in the first place. Let me illustrate:
1. Love does not always coincide with compatibility.
Just because you fall in love with someone doesn’t mean they’re a good long-term partner. Love is an emotional process, compatibility is a logical process. And they don’t necessarily translate into each other. You can fall in love with someone who doesn’t treat you well, makes you feel and think less of yourself than you do, doesn’t respect you as much as you respect them, or has such a messed-up life that they can make yours go down the drain.
It is possible to fall in love with someone who has different ambitions or life goals that conflict with yours, or with someone whose philosophical beliefs or worldview conflict with your sense of reality.
It is possible to fall in love with someone who sucks the life and happiness out of you. It’s ironic, but true. When I think about all the disastrous relationships I’ve seen people write to me, most of them were in it because of emotion. They felt that “spark” and they went nuts. Never mind that He was an alcoholic Christian and She was a bisexual drug addict necrophiliac. It still felt right.
And when six months later She was throwing his shit on the lawn and He was praying to Jesus 12 times a day to save her, they looked back and wondered, “Where did it all go wrong?”
In fact, everything went wrong before it even began.
When you’re dating and looking for a partner, you should be guided not only by your heart, but also by your head. Yes, you want to find someone who makes your heart flutter and the butterflies in your stomach sing. But you also need to evaluate the person and how they treat people, what their ambitions are, and what their worldview is. Because if you fall for someone who’s not right for you… well, as the ski instructor from South Park once said, you’re in for a bad time.
2. Love does not solve relationship problems.
My first girlfriend and I were madly in love with each other. We also lived in different cities, had no money to see each other, our families hated each other, and we went through weekly bouts of pointless drama and arguments.
And every time we fought, the next day we would come back to each other and remind ourselves that we were crazy about each other and that none of the little things mattered because we loved each other sooooo much and we would definitely find a way to work it out, we just had to wait and see. Our love made us feel like we could overcome anything, even though absolutely nothing had changed.
As you can imagine, none of the problems were being solved. The fights were recurring. The arguments were getting worse. Our inability to even see each other was like a yoke around our necks. We were self-absorbed to the point where we couldn’t even communicate properly. We would spend hours on the phone and barely say anything. Looking back, I realize there was no hope. But still, it lasted three goddamn years!
In the end, love conquers all, right?
It’s no wonder the relationship caught fire and crashed like the Hindenburg in flames. The breakup was horrific. And I learned a big lesson from that relationship: While love makes you feel better about your life’s problems, it doesn’t solve any of them.
The roller coaster of emotions can be intoxicating, with each peak seeming more impressive, but unless we have stable, solid ground under our feet, the rush of emotion will eventually wash everything away.
3. Love is not always worth sacrificing yourself for.
One of the important characteristics of loving someone is your ability to think about that person, their needs, more than you do about yourself. But the question that is rarely asked is: “What are you sacrificing for another and is it worth it?”
In a loving relationship, it is normal for both to sometimes sacrifice their desires, their needs, and their time for each other. I would say that this is adequate and healthy behavior and this is what makes a relationship really cool.
But when it comes to sacrificing one’s self-respect, self-esteem, physical fitness, ambitions, and life purpose just to be with someone, love becomes problematic. Relationships are meant to complement our individuality, not threaten it or replace it.
If we find ourselves in a situation where we tolerate disrespectful or offensive behavior, what we are essentially doing is allowing our love to consume us and reduce us to nothing. If we are not careful, we will be left as a shell of the person we once were.
Friendship test
One of the relationship advices is “You and your partner should be best friends.” Most people view this advice only in a positive light: “I should spend as much time with my partner as I do with my best friend,” “I should communicate openly with my partner as I do with my best friend,” “I should have fun with my partner as much as I have fun with my best friend.”
But it’s also worth looking at the situation from a negative angle: “Are you allowing your best friend to behave as negatively as your significant other?”
Surprisingly, when we ask ourselves this question, in most unhealthy or addictive relationships, the answer is “no.”
I knew a woman who had just gotten married. She was madly in love with her husband. And she was oblivious to the fact that her husband had been out of work for a year, showed no interest in planning the wedding, and often left her to go surfing with his friends, and that her family and friends weren’t so sure about him. Despite all this, she married him.
But when the emotional heat of the wedding wore off, reality set in. A year into their marriage, he was still unemployed and littering the house while she worked, he was angry if she didn’t have time to cook dinner, and she was increasingly complaining that he called her “spoiled” and “rude.” And yes, he was still dumping her to go surfing with his friends.
And she got into this situation because she ignored the three hard truths about love above. She idealized love. Despite all the signals he gave when they were dating, she believed that love meant compatibility. It didn’t. When her family and friends expressed concerns about the wedding, she believed that love would solve everything. It didn’t. And now that everything had turned into a pile of crap, she turned to her friends for advice on how she could sacrifice herself even more to make things work.
And, frankly speaking, nothing.
Why do we tolerate behavior in our romantic relationships that we would never allow in our friends?
Imagine your best friend moving in with you, littering your house, refusing to get a job, demanding you cook dinner for him, and getting angry and yelling at you when you complain. That friendship would end faster than Paris Hilton’s career.
Another situation. One man’s girlfriend was so jealous that she demanded the passwords to all his accounts and insisted on accompanying him on all his trips so that he wouldn’t be tempted by other women. His life was under surveillance practically 24/7. And it showed in his self-esteem. She didn’t trust him to do anything. He stopped trusting himself.
And yet he stayed with her! Why? Because he loved her!
You can love many different people throughout your life. You can love those who are good for you and those who are bad for you. You can find yourself in easy love relationships and difficult ones. You can love when you are young and when you are old. Love is not unique. Love is not rare. Love is not a scarce commodity.
Unlike your self-respect. Your self-esteem. Your ability to trust. You can fall in love many times in your life, but once you lose your self-respect, your self-esteem, or your ability to trust, it’s very hard to get back.
Love is a wonderful experience. It is one of the most powerful experiences that life has to offer. And it is something that everyone should experience and enjoy.
But like any experience, it can be healthy or unhealthy. Like any experience, it should not define you, your identity, or your purpose in life. We cannot let it destroy us. We cannot sacrifice our identity and self-worth for it. Because when we do, we lose both love and ourselves. Because you need more than love in life. Love is great. Love is necessary. Love is beautiful. But love alone is not enough.
