4 Misconceptions About True Love Stop People From Attaining It

Whether you believe or not in true love, or whether you find it to be a lie or a myth, we all want to fall in love. Yes, you included! But, there are some biases or misconceptions about true love that may have you persuaded by the opposite.

“You won’t have that constant ache in the pit of your stomach, because we are not in love. I think we do share a genuine affection for each other. We share a passion for knowledge rather than a physical passion. Although sex is something that interests you, I am sure I can provide that on occasion, given enough warning.

We were both in love (with other people), and we were both miserable and alone. Wich is a waste because as people, we are quite valuable.” — from the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces

Those were the words that Gregory Larkin (Jeff Bridges), a Columbia mathematics professor, used while asking Rose (Barbra Streisand) to marry him. He was confident he had finally found a perfect solution to suffering from love and romance, the same way he would find the perfect variables of a mathematical equation.

By getting rid of physical attraction as (in his experience) the harmful variable, he would lastly have the perfect relationship. He would call it: “a lasting and substantial mutual respect, genuine affection” kind of relationship.

But his theory fell apart as it always does, be it in a 1996 movie or a modern-day one, and in real-life as well. Let me tell you why:

The misconceptions about true love

Yet, some people still don’t get it, even though they make it quick to jump to conclusions regarding their love journey. And, usually, those conclusions fall between these four cliches that I’m about to tell you and which I like to call misconceptions about true love:

∘ 1. Love is meant to hurt
∘ 2. Love is blind
∘ 3. Love means never wanting to change your partner
∘ 4. Romantic love dies after marriage

1. Love is meant to hurt

This quote brings up one of the first misconceptions about true love that makes people run away from it.

People do not want to suffer. They do not want to feel the ache in the pit of their stomach. Since they believe that love would make them suffer, they avoid it all along, without even properly trying.

Well, love does not hurt people! People do!

People hurt themselves or others because they choose certain variables for their love equation. Some people know the result they want their love equation to have. Others think they know that, while some others have no idea.

But, what all of them have in common is forgetting you have to put in the right variables for the equation to bring up the right result.

Some may choose indifference, a low rate of involvement in the relationship, selfishness, a certain conviction about what will make them feel good, like choosing a partner to whom they are not physically attracted or just the opposite.

Others may choose to love blindly because they desperately want to feel love and thus be in a relationship. They are sometimes so determined that they “see” in their partner qualities that he or she might not even have.

People are the variables. Everything they do, whatever they choose their efforts to be, how much they grow and improve, makes for the final result of their love equation.

2. Love is blind

The hardest part of the love equation is that it takes two variables to converge. They both need to be suitable for each other, to deliver the appropriate result. Failing to succeed at the above, people fall for another of the most common misconceptions about true love. Love is blind, they say.

Let’s give this adaptability of partners a historical view.

Once upon a time

As evidenced in many cultures through history, there was a time when people used to say that finding a good partner and having a happy marriage was pure luck.

This quote is pretty plausible since, at the time, it was the parents who determined whom their children would marry. Back then, spouses were unknown variables to each other. They would have to get to know each other only after getting married. And, if they were lucky to get well-matched, they could have a nice marital life.

Modern times

In modern society, people are free to choose partners themselves. Most importantly, they get to know them as much as they’d want, for as long as they’d want to. And yet, people still, many times, attribute their love experience to luck.

And, if luck wouldn’t be enough romantically generous to them, they’d say: “love is blind” at the end of the story.

But is it the love that is blind really, or is it the excuses people give to themselves for not wanting to accept the reality in front of them?

Is it the love that is blind or, is it the people who decide to blind themselves in the name of love?

Love is blind, one of the most common misconceptions about true love in modern times.

We all want love. As Rose confessed to her best friend and us, we all want someone to know us deeply. Someone to know what we like and dislike, what we are afraid of, what toothpaste we like to use.

Many times people feel desperate to find love. They want it so badly that they attribute it to the first person that shows even the tiniest signs of being the partner they want in life.

People very much like those little signs. They get overwhelmed and full of hope. They want them and fear to let them fade away, so they convince themselves that those signs are enough.

Therefore, people blindfold themselves in their desperate love seeking adventure.

Some do not take long to recognize that they have blindfolded themselves, while some others keep hoping for longer until the band falls off.

Apparently, for everyone escaping reality is just a matter of time.

Sooner or later, people realize they haven’t been honest with themselves and that what they got in their relationship was not enough. They realize in the process that what they want is not just mutual respect and genuine affection.

People need a passionate romance and the brushing-their-teeth-together every day, at the same time.

At some point, they realize themselves to be enough and ask to be loved respectfully for every single characteristic of their body, soul, and mind. Now, they refuse to pick between their features appropriate variables for their happy life equation and then force that result to be enough for them.

They, us, we, want to have the whole thing. And for that to turn out appropriately, we would need to make our whole selves available as a variable.

3. Love means never wanting to change your partner

True love is two people entering a relationship by being themselves as a whole, putting all traits, the good and the bad ones, on the table.

It means being vulnerable to one another and for both to start and keep working with all that ongoing. True love means being willing to accept what is not great on both sides while patiently working together towards improving.

Real love is growing, improving, changing together for the better.

We all change. Everybody should change and evolve. It is the process of life.

Where there is fear to discuss with the respective partner to change things for the good of the relationship, there is no place for true love. If there is no willingness from both partners to change the relationship for the better, there is no true love.

True love means showing a willingness to make positive changes together.

4. Romantic love dies after marriage

“As I stood at the altar beside my sister and her husband-to-be, it struck me that this ritual called a wedding ceremony is just the final scene of a fairy tale. They never tell you what happens after.

They never tell you that Cinderella drove the Prince crazy with her obsessive need to clean the castle, or that she missed her day job. They don’t tell us what happens after because there is no after. The be-all and the end-all of romantic love was marriage.” -Rose from The Mirror Has Tow Faces

The end of the movie showed us quite the opposite though. Romantic love appears to be on fire after marriage for Rose. Also, we surely know cases, myself included, where romantic love is still pretty alive after marriage and doing way better than before.

While this one hits top-of-the-list of misconceptions about true love, it is not marriage that ruins the love equation. It is the partners involved who do.

Marriage is the hardest management in life. And as every management to succeed, it requires willpower and smart work.

‘Love is not simply an emotion to be felt, it is a skill to be learned’ — they say at The School of Life.*

But, for more detailed information on how to keep a happy marriage, I invite you to read the article below:

Final thoughts on misconceptions about true love:

Love and relationships cannot be the perfect result of a mathematical equation whose authenticity remains intact for all times. Like Rose, we do not want everything adding up to some perfect equation. We also need the chaotic out-of-his-mind-for-me kind of romance. We need to have passionate sex and, at the same time, our partners to embrace our irritating little habits patiently.

So, what makes love and relationships a mathematical fact is that we want all of the above. True love does exist, as it is considered an axiom and, we all want it.

Many variables will interfere in the people’s love journey, including the time factor as an important one. You may also fall prey to one or many misconceptions about true love at some point. But, despite all the above, it is mathematically logical that people themselves are responsible for the results of their love equation.

In the end, Love itself won’t blind or hurt you and, marriage has no other power over you than the one you as partners give to it.

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Thanks for taking the time to read my article.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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