I Don’t Want A ‘Right Now’ Romance, I Want A Lasting Love

couple relaxing in a car
Toa Heftiba

For the longest time, I wasn’t very good at relationships. I got my heart broken time and time again and was convinced that the common denominator had to be me. I had to be doing something wrong if the story always ended with my heart breaking and the romance fading. I felt like I was always willing to go above and beyond to find the one, but that same energy never seemed to be reciprocated back to me.

And, when you get burned enough, it makes you nervous to even step back into the ring. I thought back on all the “almost” relationships and all of the “not quite” romances. I contemplated the concept of commitment and if it was even out there for me. I championed a contrast of emotion, from hopeful to bitter and back again. If you’ve been there too, I know you’ve felt that pain and uncertainty looming around every corner.

But, the problem is that we live in a “right now” culture, which can make finding love a lot more challenging.

Many love interests want to find what makes them happy right now. When the newness fades, the romance does too, and that just won’t cut it when you have a big heart and big hopes.

Love is all about compromise, but falling in love shouldn’t be. So, if you’re in the thick of it, never feel like you need to compromise on the ideals that are important to you. Never feel like you have to settle or change who you are in order to be worthy of love. Too many of us invest our time and energy into trying to make the wrong love right. But, when it’s right, it’ll fit into the picture without edits and modifications. It’ll make everything worth the wait when you have that clarity that this is exactly what you’ve been looking for, and you didn’t have to settle.

So, if you’re still searching for that epic love, please don’t give up on it.

You may have to wait longer than you thought, and you may have to suffer through some relationships that were masquerading as the real deal. But, those moments of pain and heartbreak will feel a whole universe away when you finally realize what the purpose was.

Trust me, I know that the frustrations of the “almost” relationship can break your heart, and I know it’ll make you feel tempted to give up or give in to a “less than” love. For a long time, I thought that maybe happiness would mean that I just needed to change my expectations or settle for “close enough”. The truth is that the path to finding love isn’t always a straight line, but it doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to get there someday.

It’s one of those things that is so frustrating to hear in the moment, but one day you’re able to look back and see that it was true. You’ll be able to say you have found a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love in a world that was once overshadowed by heartbreak. So, just trust that you’ll be on the other side of the story someday, telling another discouraged soul that their great love is out there, and truly believing that they will find their happy ending too. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Liz Newman is a blogger and poet from the Midwest.

More From Thought Catalog