Going through life, you meet people, fall in love with some of them, and most times end up in pain, thinking you’ll never be able to move on after the failed relationship.
Your ideas about relationships change and evolve until one day you wake up and realize that life doesn’t work the way you expected it to. Nothing plays out as you thought it would, and with every up comes a down.
It’s not all milk and honey, and more often than not, things don’t work out the way you imagined them to. But in the end, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Once you figure out certain things about love and relationships, you’ll learn some valuable lessons that will stick with you for the rest of your life.
At first, these facts will sadden you and feel like an attack on your concept of love. But eventually, you’ll learn to deal with them and they’ll help you to not set your expectations too high.
Here are some of the things you’ll probably learn the hard way that will change your ideas on relationships.
1. People get into relationships for selfish reasons
At first, you think that he genuinely likes you. After a while, you realize that one of the main reasons he’s with you is that it feels good that you like him.
But then again, you can’t blame him. When you think about it, the reason you’re with him is that you’re desperately trying to find someone who’ll give you all of the love and attention you want to receive.
So, it’s obvious that we all enter relationships trying to fill the void inside of us. We want a relationship to help us get all of the things we need so badly that no one’s given to us before.
It’s a sad truth that we all have our selfish reasons for feeling this need to be with another.
It doesn’t mean that you’ll take advantage of your partner or that you’ll treat him narcissistically. But there’s one tiny part of you that needs someone to bring you happiness because you feel like you can’t give it to yourself.
2. You often fall in love with the idea, and not the person
Let’s be honest. We all have different pictures in our heads of how real love and romantic relationships should look.
Then, when you find yourself a partner, you try to project all of these traits in your mind onto him.
And it usually works until the first fight pops up, or something else happens that makes you realize that things aren’t the way you thought them to be.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only person who does this. We all create these picturesque scenarios of how a relationship should look and how our partner should act.
Then, at the first reality check, you realize that you’re living in your dreams and nothing is the way you presented it to yourself.
As soon as you get real about your partner, things start to make more sense. You won’t end up in a dead-end street anymore because of all of the blank spaces you filled by yourself.
Let your partner show you what he’s actually like and stop creating assumptions about him. Trust me, life will be much easier once you do.
3. At one point in a relationship, someone will end up hurt
Even if you’re in a happy relationship, at some point in time, one of you will end up hurt. It’s the way love works and there’s nothing you can do to change it.
One of you will say something hurtful (either unintentionally or intentionally) and the other person will feel the pain of the words. One of you will do something hurtful and the other person will instantly get upset.
Since none of us are perfect, you can’t expect to have it any differently. This is just the way relationships work.
Of course, if your partner is emotionally or physically abusing you, then that’s not something you should tolerate.
When I mentioned getting hurt, I meant about things that make your heart ache for a second but can be fixed with an apology and a promise not to let it happen again.
Abuse doesn’t belong to the same category.
4. You won’t always feel madly in love
In movies, you see these couples who feel the insatiable need to always be together. They instantly miss each other the second they’re apart and they can’t go a day without saying “I love you” at least ten times.
Let me tell you right away that this isn’t the way you’ll feel.
At times, you’ll need to be alone and not want to spend every waking moment with your partner. It’s not because of something they did, but simply because you’ll feel the need for a little “me time.”
Some days, it’ll seem as if you’re like a movie couple, other days you won’t be able to look at each other. These feelings are normal and they are a part of every relationship.
Don’t think that you’ll always feel the love or that you won’t be able to go a day without your partner, as reality may make you feel like you’re a bad person.
But there’s nothing bad with listening to your heart and giving it exactly what it needs at that point in time.
5. Love isn’t the only thing you need for a relationship to work
You may think that a relationship doesn’t work without love, and that’s true. But at one point, you’ll realize that you need much more than that.
You need to respect each other, communicate well, and be there for each other. If any of these things is missing, your relationship cannot and will not work.
It will fall apart like a house of cards because there’s no way for it to survive on love alone.
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