Love is a myth
Love is nothing but the sweetness of your emotion. It cannot be equated with a healthy and successful relationship. You may feel attracted to someone, but close interaction with them might reveal that they are not who you think they are.
The idea that movies present of happily ever after is nothing but bullshit. There is no such thing as forever love, or even love, when two people are involved. Love is what you feel within, and what you have with another person is a relationship.
If you expect love to be enough and see it as a pathway to happiness and a long-term successful relationship, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
The honeymoon phase will always get over
Ask any couple who has been together for more than a year to two; they will tell you that the initial spark goes away. The butterflies you feel at the beginning of any relationship will subside, and your partner will no longer look flawless.
The more time you spend with them, the more you will encounter different sides of them, and you will not always like what time unfolds. Everyone is imperfect, and differences are inevitable in any relationship; how you deal with those differences determines your relationship’s success.
So, the reality check is this: In the long run, being single, although it would deprive you of a support system, would save you from dealing with the imperfections of others.
Relationships require time, effort, and education
Relationships require serious work. People engage in that serious work because they want a support system. If you can get comfortable with the idea of loneliness, you can skip the hard work of
a) educating yourself on choosing a partner wisely, and
b) understanding healthy behaviors necessary for making a relationship work (yeah, slamming the door won’t work!)
I have written detailed articles on making a relationship work, and you can give them a look to see that relationships are an insane amount of work:
Why does the majority fail at relationships, and how can you not?
Books on Relationships that everyone must read
It all comes down to a choice
The choice is between loneliness on one side and suffocation, anger, and frustration on the other.
As the School of Life says,
Being alone spares you from constant reminders of how difficult and strange you are. No one is there to hold a mirror up — record your antics and constantly make you accountable for them. If you are lucky, you can tolerate and even like yourself if you are on your own. Think about it: it may be better to be denied sex outside of a relationship than inside one.
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Thanks for reading.
Check out my other pieces on relationships and life here: Bhanu Singhal
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
