Oh, love.
It’s both gracious and rugged, peaceful and stressful. It comes with ups and downs, good and bad, understanding and tests… and there’s certainly no “one size fits all” method of experiencing it.
Love has to be one of the most intensely diverse feelings on the planet and the majority of us are still on the search for it’s wild, engaging mystery. Love is, at least for me, one of the scariest, unsure feelings I’ve ever experienced and in that same light, I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of it. I’ll never stop trying to find true love.
Love is meant to be explored. We should continue to take risks, test boundaries, and make real connections. No, we’re not all guaranteed to find our soulmate before we leave the Earth. In all honesty, some of us will settle. Others will remain scared, stubborn, and single. And many of us will be bamboozled into believing that we’ve found our soulmate. Unfortunately, we will all brush the shoulder of heartbreak and disappointment at some point in our dating life (just for a while, of course)—and that’s okay.
We all want to find our person, but it’s not the end of the road if you don’t. Just so you know, there’s more to love than finding a soulmate.
For starters, before you find your soulmate, find yourself. Love should begin with YOU. I can’t stress enough how important it is to love yourself, first. Being incapable of falling in love with yourself doesn’t mean that no one else will be able to—I hate it when people say that, honestly. Love is unconditional and limitless. However, I’d imagine it very difficult to identify and appreciate the love someone else has for you when you can’t and haven’t already given it to yourself.
When you don’t find love, find the lesson. I mean honestly, if I gave up on love every time I found out that me and “the one” were done, I’d have stopped dating in the 8th grade. Over the last ten plus years of my love life, I’ve encountered many different forms of love, from many different types of people. Needless to say, each experience was very different and even though things didn’t work out, I was still able to take away the lessons that each relationship taught me so that I could apply them (or change them) in my next relationship. It’s all about improvement.
While I’m sure we’d all like to marry the love of our lives and live happily ever after, but have you ever stopped to think that you’ve got to be healed, ready and willing to live a life you can’t even imagine with the person you can’t live without—your soulmate? Love happens the best way when we’re ready to receive it. So lastly, find your faith in finding love because it’s out there, but you’ve got to be ready to grab it by the hand when it approaches.
Here’s to never giving up on love. 
