1. Love won’t fix all your problems or fix you. But it will make getting over the difficulties in your life easier because you have someone by your side to lean on.

2. Love won’t magically make all your previous relationship issues disappear. You will still have to work through your deeper issues, your past heartbreak and your self-esteem all by yourself. Your partner is not responsible for someone else’s mistakes.

3. There’s no right or wrong way to love someone. You adapt to your partner’s ways and they adapt to yours but you learn that no one will understand why you’re doing what you’re doing unless they’re in your shoes.

4. You won’t be as lonely as you were but you will still have some lonely nights. Love cures loneliness but it doesn’t put an end to it, you will still feel lonely sometimes, especially if your partner is out of town or when you’re dealing with something deeply personal and you don’t want to burden your partner with it, so don’t expect to kiss your loneliness goodbye when you find love.

5. You will learn more about yourself. Love will show you the best and worst in yourself, it will bring up a lot of insecurities and childhood issues that you’ll need to revisit and deal with but it will also give you a reason to start making healthier choices and changes.

6. You will still have to learn the art of loving yourself. Just because someone loves you doesn’t mean your work here is done. Self-love is a weapon you need to always be armed with and you will still have to learn how to battle people who make you feel unworthy of love.

7. Love will make your life better but you can’t depend on it for your happiness. You still have to find happiness in other places and mainly in yourself because love doesn’t always last and you can’t make it the only source of happiness in your life.

8. You’ll never stop learning things about your partner. Even though you feel like you know everything about your partner, you will always be learning new things about them triggered by certain situations and certain memories. Never stop paying attention.

9. Love will teach you how to give without expecting the same in return. Love will teach you so much about kindness, forgiveness and making an effort just to make someone smile. It will teach you how to give and keep on giving without keeping score.

10. Love will not work if you’re not honest with yourself first. Before being honest with your partner, you have to be honest with yourself first and understand exactly what you’re okay with and not okay with and what exactly you want out of the relationship so you don’t get disappointed later on.

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.