Let’s Stop Pretending We Want True Love

Don’t buy into the hype.

Instead of wading through ramblings about what arbitrary characteristics make someone an ill-fitting match, cut through the clear packing tape and embrace the truth. Don’t bog yourself down with the incessant diatribes turned into flowery love letter for painters, dancers, guys with mustaches, and literature lovers. Those are just cute lies blocking you from the truth you were hoping to find based on the misnomer of a title the author bamboozled you with.

If you don’t want your heart to be broken by some flakey girl who likes to travel or that moody guy who only speaks using Haiku, stop believing in the idea of true love. The fluttering in your heart that is supposed to come whenever you see “the one”, or read a description that suits them is a farce. World Peace and the Easter Bunny are sitting at Jack Frost’s bar laughing at you right now.

You can go through all the motions; nod your head at all the shamefully stereotypical lists in agreement, but the facts won’t change. It doesn’t matter who you do or don’t date, the key to a success in a relationship is nullifying the age old hypothesis of true love.

Yes. I said hypothesis.

Make no mistake, love is real. However, true love, the exotic dragon that haplessly grumbles behind the plot of each shitty just-in–time-for-the-holidays romantic comedy ever made has become sugarcoated fiction.

From the moment you lock eyes with someone for the first time at a freshman ice cream mixer, until the night realize you’ve never felt safer than when you were lying next to them, there is no true love. The premise that there is one person out there worthy of secret kisses on the fifth floor staircase, nights binge drinking until you can’t feel your sweat riddled face, or trying to figure out how you can swing your beliefs on marriage toward patriarchal tradition is flawed.

There is nothing true about white dresses and gold wedding bands. There is no moment of awe and wonder in giving up your limitless freedoms as an “I” just so you can endure the warm touch of a “we”. There is no definitive truth in a love that is still threading across dinner tables, thickening in spite of time zones and loud quirks.

That is just the society challenging, heart aching, mind flustering phenomena known as love. The soul-crushing ending that is truth hasn’t been added to it yet.

True love is what happens when gazes across the table stop and phone doesn’t ping as loudly. True love is what happens when you can’t remember every word to the last fight you had, only that you went to a overrated restaurant once and fell in love with a stray hair latching on to his/her face. True love is the moment your heart stops because you know it’s over and you wish you could’ve had more time to share the best of what’s in you.

Why would anyone actually want that?

You don’t.

Line by line, improperly used word after word, no matter how many “Is (s)he the one” or “Don’t date a ___” articles you read and secretly agree with, you don’t want true love. You don’t want to have the pleasure of looking back on awkward first kisses and teary eyed confessions that can still make every crappy part of your day seem juvenile. You don’t want to walk the same streets or dine in the restaurants you made storied together alone. You don’t want flashbacks of your first road trip together barreling through your head while you’re being forced to move on. You don’t want the love story to end.

So, let’s stop pretending.

Let’s stop pretending we want the true love misers have been peddling us for years in the hopes we buy a mildly funny, but poignant anniversary card. No one actually wants to look back and say, “Even though it ended—and I’ll never get anything close to what we had, I’d do it all again.” No one wants to get to the part where you’re supposed to say it was worth it. None of us really want to experience the truth that happens after love when we could be spending that time in it.

Don’t fall for the hype.

Forget what they told you about true love.

Go for broke on being in love, it’s much better than being alone with the truth.