This Is How You Are Unintentionally Ruining Your Love Life

Please know that life should never be looked at as a marathon. Life isn’t meant to be a list of all the things you never did or never accomplished. Life isn’t meant to be something to get over with. Life is meant to be lived, and to be fully enjoyed.

And just like life shouldn’t be rushed, your love life shouldn’t either. 

We have a checklist set up for us the moment we know what cooties are. We run around the playground screeching while boys and girls chase us down. We giggle into our hands wondering when our crush will want to chase us too.

We don’t even know what we are doing, but we know we want someone to notice us.

In middle school we wait by our lockers just to get a second glance of the person we secretly admire from afar, who are usually in the popular crowd and have never noticed you at all. We gaze longingly at the boys with their sideways smiles and the girls with their long, blonde shiny hair. We start to notice that people are already coupling up. Already advancing ahead of us.

And we would do just about anything to get our hand held before the age of 13.

In high school, our best friends get boyfriends and girlfriends. We worry something is wrong with us. We worry we aren’t good enough to ever get someone to love us. We cry in our beds secretly, wanting so badly to be kissed by the age of 15.

Everyone else has things checked off their list. But not you. 

So, we rush into everything. We rush into first kisses and first dates. We dive into our first relationships head first, without a second thought. And that’s exactly how we ruin it. We ruin it by sprinting so fast, that we run out of breath too early. We ruin love by wanting it too much.

Relationships aren’t meant to be rushed. Relationships aren’t meant to be forced. And love isn’t just something to check off your list. 

After our first relationship, there is something else that needs to be checked off our list. Losing our virginity becomes more of a game to us instead of something that holds meaning. So we lose it to the girl we met at that party. We lose it to the boy who just likes us for our bodies. We lose it and run.

We never stop trying to be like everyone else. We never stop trying to check off every little thing on our list that society deems acceptable. Because God forbid you don’t get your first kiss until college. And God forbid you don’t lose your virginity till you’re 30.

We see love as just a game. We try so hard to win at everything, that in the end we do nothing but lose.

We ruin love by falling down the same rabbit hole that everyone else falls through. We ruin love by never thinking about what that word truly means, and by just caring about fitting in. We ruin our love life by rushing into everything. We rush into first kisses, first relationships, and first dates. And then we rush into our engagement proposals and marriage.

Stop trying so hard to please everyone else around you. Stop trying so hard to be like everyone else. 

Love wasn’t made to be something on a list. Love wasn’t made to be something that was quick and painless. Love was made to be magic, and it was made to be done with grace and passion.

And we ruin our love life by pretending not to care. 

Please care. Please treat love with the respect it deserves. Care about yourself and your needs instead of what everyone else wants. Care about love and about how you treat people.

We ruin love by pretending it isn’t special. When in the end, all we truly want is the kind of love that doesn’t fade. All we truly want is the kind of love that becomes magic. And all we really want at the end of the day, is to be able to call someone our home.