5 Reasons Why It’s Okay If You’ve Never Loved a Significant Other

L-O-V-E. Everyone has their own opinions on the four-letter word, and everyone uses it differently, but for those of you who have only used it with family, friends, or pets, and never with a significant other, it is not the end of the world and life will go on even without those four letters.

What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me.

If you’ve never had it, you don’t really know what you’re missing. You’ve most likely been witness to it, may have helped some heart broken friends in your lifetime, and seen your fair share of romantic comedies, but every love is unique. Your love is not the same as your heart broken friend’s love, and it is definitely not the same as the love in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” or any other rom-com starring Matthew McConaughey. You won’t know what kind of love you are capable of giving if you have never given it before, and that’s not always a bad thing.

L-O-V-E involves a lot of R-I-S-K

Even though the word is only four letters long, it can leave you with what feels like a lifetime of heartbreak. There’s so much at risk when you “love” your significant other and that risk may not always work in your favor. You risk the chance of getting hurt or hurting someone else, and if you have never loved someone than you don’t know what that hurt feels like.

Hopeful – Not Hopeless

Just because you never have doesn’t mean you never will. Why do we call ourselves hopeLESS romantics to indicate that we love…to be in love? We should call those types of people hopeFUL romantics. If you have never “loved” a significant other, don’t feel hopeless. Feel hopeful that one day you will feel that way. Some people realize they love someone in one single moment, and for others it happens gradually over time. Whenever and however the epiphany hits you, when you haven’t had it yet you should look forward to the day when you finally will.

We accept the love we think we deserve

For all of you “Perks of Being a Wallflower” fans, if Stephen Chbosky’s saying has any truth to it, and we truly “accept the love we think we deserve,” then we better start believing in ourselves and our “loving” capablities. If you have never loved or accepted love from a significant other, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it, it just means it hasn’t happened. Everyone deserves love in their life, and we all have experienced it in some way. Appreciate the type of love you do have in your life rather than focusing on the type of love you don’t.

You haven’t settled

Maybe you have never loved a significant other because you aren’t willing to settle on the meaning of the word. If you have been choosy about who you are willing to share the four letters with, it shows how important you think the word is. You know the word isn’t a baseball and you’re not willing to toss it around like so.