How To Not Fall Out Of Love With Someone

Love someone breathlessly, recklessly, senselessly, until you don’t.

Love someone who lights your world on fire, until the flame dies down to embers and burns quietly, comfortably inside you.

Settle into that love. Become acclimatized to it. Become secure enough to branch out and know that it’s not going anywhere.

Meet someone new.

Someone with a softer, deeper, more intoxicating presence. Tell yourself you’re bound to be best friends. Tell yourself you’re soulmates in the most platonic sense.

Stay up until 4am, whispering your thoughts to one another. Listen to the music that she loves. Feel her presence inside each song. Accidentally brush her hand one morning while you are preparing her coffee. Watch her blush shyly. Convince yourself that you imagined it. Convince yourself you’re searching for impossible things.

Text your boyfriend. Tell him that you’re happy. Ask him about his day. Remember how strong his arms feel wrapped around you in the dead of night. Tell him you love him. Tell him you love him so much you can’t breathe. Forget to mention that it’s the altitude. Forget to mention the way her hair smells when she leans in to kiss you on the cheek. Convince yourself that’s not the reason why you’re left breathless. Convince yourself you know how to stay in love.

Slow your heat rate and your brain waves and mind. Go for long walks in the mornings. Meditate. Scroll through pictures upon pictures of yourself and the man who has loved you for so long that it still seems impossible some days. Remind yourself that love takes work. Remind yourself that nothing worth keeping comes easy.

Realign yourself. Reconnect with each of your loyalties.

One night, catch a glimpse of her through a cracked door in the hotel room that you’re sharing, with her bra unclasped and her lips parted, staring in the mirror. Catch her eye. Feel electricity surge through the air and light a fire inside each of your senses.

That night, change hotel rooms. That night, stay home. That night, don’t listen to the songs that she has sent you or wake up in time to make her coffee.

That night, turn the lights down and the music off and be alone with yourself.

That night, remember love takes work. Fall asleep next to a glowing computer screen with the words ‘I love you’ typed out to the person whom you have promised to keep on loving.

That night, pay homage to every cracked hotel room door you’ll come across for the rest of your life.

Slam each one shut inside your mind.

That night, for the first of an endless number of nights, make the conscious choice to not fall out of love.