Your ‘Forever Person’ Isn’t Going To Be Perfect (And This Is A Good Thing)

When we’re little, we imagine our future love, our big love, our real love, where we get swept off our feet by a magical Prince(ss) Charming and get to spend the rest of our lives waking up to that perfect face in a messy bed in the beautiful life we’ve created together…or something like that. Right?

Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the point. At some time in our younger-ish lives, we daydream about what love will be like, who ‘the one’ will be, how he/she will look, or how happy we’ll one day become.

We get excited about the possibilities, about the what-ifs, about this unknown future with an unknown lover. And as foolish as it is, we make wishes about how it’ll all pan out.

But the problem with our little daydreams, is that we create expectations. We imagine this future person as flawless, and nothing less. They’ll swoop into our lives with grace and charm. They’ll laugh at all our stupid jokes. They’ll crave peanut butter and love to hike and enjoy waking up at 5AM just like us, right? Because why would they be any less than perfect, right?

We try to plan out love like it’s something we can control. We try to measure it, to calculate it, to determine when and where and how it’ll happen, as if it’s manufactured or man-made, as if it’s something we can grasp between our fingertips.

We unknowingly put up walls around our hearts, telling us not to let anyone in, or telling us to wait for this perfect person, but the thing is—there is no perfect person.

And the more we keep waiting for this ideal lover to come around, the more we’re ruining our own chances at finding real, messy, beautiful love.

There is no perfect person. No person that’s going to be exactly what you wanted; no person that’s going to mold perfectly into the jagged edges of your life. You’re not going to find a man/woman who’s always going to say the right things, who’s never going to fight with you, who’s going to always love you how you deserve to be loved. Yes, you’ll find someone who treats you better than you ever imagined. And yes, you’ll find someone who will show you why it never worked with anyone else, but that person won’t be blameless. That person won’t be an angel. And that’s okay.

We’re all imperfect and all searching for someone whose imperfections mold with ours.

We’re all looking for our forever person. For ‘the one.’ For someone who is the answer to our prayers—not in the way that he or she matches this list of criteria, but in the way that God has blessed us with an imperfect person who wants to love us, and seeks love in return.

And so we need to rid ourselves of the expectations, of the daydreams, of the way we’ve already set walls in our hearts and minds.

Because love isn’t about perfection. It’s about finding a person to share your broken heart with.

It’s about learning someone, and having them learn you, and learning about the world, together. It’s about being with someone who gets that you are stubborn as hell and bite your nails and cry at the littlest things and sometimes say too much—and they still want you, despite all that.

Your forever person isn’t going to come in on a grand white horse or a magic carpet. He/she isn’t going to be a fairytale prince(ss) or this beautiful body glowing in sunlight like a god(ess).

This person is going to bump into your life and and make it messier, crazier, more imperfect, and more wonderful. So so wonderful.

So stop worrying about finding love and finding ‘the one.’ The person you’re meant to be with will come into your life when you least expect it, and no, he/she won’t be everything you imagined.

He/she will be real, broken, beautiful.
And even better.