As an avid lover of rom-coms, from the films Bridget Jones’s Diary to Crazy, Stupid Love, I have observed, like many women, that it is hard not to replace real-life romance with fictional fairy tales. Doing so has created false and unrealistic emotional expectations, followed by disappointment that a man did not write a letter to me every day for a year (i.e. The Notebook) or sing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” in front of my whole soccer team (i.e. 10 Things I Hate About You). Ultimately, my point is that while these movies can break one’s heart and put it all back together again in an hour and a half, real love is not quite that simple, and the side effects can be more damaging than one might think.
One of the most disputed testaments of love is the existence of the perfect person for you. As I have grown older, despite what sometimes my heart wants to believe, I have begun to doubt the reality of there being a soulmate out there for us all. This is not to say that some of us are bound to be forever alone; it just may be that waiting around for Mr. Right might be a fool’s errand.
Dating the same person for two years has taught me over and over again that love is a choice rather than merely a feeling. Just like a friendship, a relationship requires devout loyalty. For the majority of the time, you find yourself realizing that despite the list of criteria you dreamed up for the perfect partner, as long as you truly care about a person and that your goals and priorities primarily align, everything else kind of fades into the background. Ultimately, with enough love and effort, you could probably make love work with a variety of people given this reality.
Day in and day out, if you truly love the person you’re with, you choose to forgive all the reasons that he or she isn’t perfect, just like you are not. Expecting to fit perfectly with someone can make you wonder what could have been with someone down the road because you were too busy chasing the fantasy of a love expectation as opposed to a love reality. A romantic destiny is what most people, regardless of gender, desire. The notion of a “perfect match” has become the norm for fulfillment. Anything less feels like a cheated opportunity for that “happily ever after.”
Love is an infinite phenomenon that knows no boundaries or limitations. It reaches far across our universe, allowing each of us to love and to be loved. It connects us to one another in a wide network of ways based upon compatibility, attraction, and attachment. However, we consciously choose when to accept and embrace love just as we may opt to forgo and reject love. Having a soulmate feels like there are no other options but this one. The notion that one person out there is destined to be my other perfect half creates the feeling that I am not whole without him…that my fulfillment and completeness will only exist if we are lucky enough to find one another and endure the challenges of a relationship that will forever survive despite the struggles of life.
Making love last requires mutual effort regarding respect and care for another person rather than relying upon fate to work things out. Relying on only one person to be your everything feels like tremendously unfair pressure. I prefer to believe that the relationships that go the distance are those involving a couple that wants to stay together, working life’s complications out as the relationship evolves, together shaping and linking their individual destinies. Desiring true compatibility with a soulmate inhibits the motivation to build a strong relationship with a great partner because the joy of building a relationship together becomes secondary to the assumption that the relationship will last because it is predetermined to do so. Cultivating romantic growth as opposed to fate working it all out is far more rewarding in developing a long-term commitment. Until two people are fully aware that love is a risk and accept that it won’t last without investment, it may not have been the only relationship you were meant to have in the first place.