For a very long time, I thought I knew what romantic love entailed.
I grew up reading countless romance books: The Selection series by Kiera Cass, Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkes, and various Wattpad books during middle school. This turned into books by Emily Henry and Taylor Jenkins Reed when I entered college — romance novels have been a big part of my reading journey since I could remember.
Movies were no different. Anyone But You, Set It Up, and Always Be My Maybe have been on rotation whenever I need a good rom-com lately. These weren’t the only movies I watched however, since many Bollywood movies — which is what I mainly grew up on — have love as one of the leading plot lines.
I watched friends around me get into relationships with boys who wooed them with just the right words, sliding into an Instagram DM or meeting each other through a friend of a friend. I saw adults hold hands as they walked out of the movie theater and elderly couples sit side by side in the booth of their favorite restaurant.
I thought I knew what romantic love entailed — two people with equal attraction for each other, dating and kissing and holding hands and, of course, sex. This is what everything around me told me was romantic love. And this is what I believed.
I spent years looking for this type of love that I had envisioned for myself — a perfect meet cute, a perfect first date, the perfect person. I went on countless first dates and kissed random people at parties, trying to find the idea of romance into every nook and cranny I could find.
But as most real life stories go, you can’t shove love at people and expect for it to bloom.
I thought I was doomed, cursed to never find the love I so desperately consumed and clawed at each day. It wasn’t until I got into my first relationship that I learned what this romantic love I deeply craved truly consisted of.
I’ve learned that love isn’t fairytales and movies. It’s even better.
Love is the ability to feel safe around this person, for them to be your home base, your rock, and most trusted confidant. Love is the ability to be weird and unfiltered like you never have before without the fear of a raised eyebrow and judgement, instead being met back with the same level of weird, if not weirder. Love is feeling peaceful when it’s just you two, like nothing else even matters, like time stops when you’re with them.
I thought I knew what romantic love entailed, but it turns out, I didn’t. It’s softer, more subtle than you realize. It lurks in the little moments. And it’s better than what you think it is.