We all have heard that love isn’t a feeling. That it’s not merely about the fuzzy sensations, that while feelings often accompany love, they aren’t the definition. I think we’ve grown to understand and accept that, but it doesn’t mean we still understand what the purposes of love are.

We take love and measure it in feelings vs. actions- “This person did/said this thing, and it made me feel better. They are the right one.” When in reality, love isn’t responsible for that. Love does make us feel good. It’s a fantastic side effect. It even makes sense that it’s the reason love draws us in- we want to hold close the things that make us feel good.

We may understand love isn’t a feeling, but we do still place a substantial association on the way it makes us feel. That love’s primary purpose is about making us feel good. About making us feel on top of the world. While making a choice to love someone does often involve aspiring to make them happy, safe, and secure in a relationship, it doesn’t mean love’s goal is entirely centered around that feeling alone.

Love is often pushed as the end goal for everyone, but not because it makes us better. But because we want it to make us feel better. We want it to fix our problems, to make us whole, to take our bad moments, and make them worthwhile. We are less concerned about becoming better and more about feeling better.

We decided long ago that love was the way to do that.

We declared that, despite there being so many things in this life that can make us feel good, love is the ultimate solution. That another person’s main purpose is to cause us joy, and that this is the main reason love exists in our lives. So no wonder people fall apart when love doesn’t last. No wonder we dive into relationships searching for something, or keeping it at bay because we are terrified we will never find it. We made it seem like it was the ultimate key to our happiness when love was never supposed to be about that.

Because love doesn’t exist just to make you feel good, and we have to stop acting like it does. We lose sight of everything love is when we do. We lose sight of the fact that it exists to help you grow. It exists to prove that you don’t know everything. That you can’t control everything.

Love doesn’t exist just so you can have the butterflies. It shows you what you’re willing to compromise. It shows you what you’re willing to ask for. It shows you how you act when you’re wrong, how you apologize when you know it. It lets you see all your strengths and weaknesses and how they look in someone else’s eyes.

Love doesn’t exist just to make your heart beat faster, but to show you what kind of person you can be when you’re entirely yourself. It gives you time after time to forgive, to let another person be human with you. It shows you precisely what you’re capable of, and believes in you even when you don’t.

Love does so much, and it asks for so much in return. The moment that we start seeing love as the final piece missing before we are truly happy, we miss out on every single gift and lesson it desires to teach us.

Love doesn’t exist just to make you feel good, and if you give it a chance, you’ll see how incredible it is that this isn’t the case.

You’ll see how incredible love truly, deeply becomes.