Blog Post 1: Love

Welcome to my blog. I'm just going to dive right into my first post here. Please leave a comment at the end to let me know what you think. This ones a little heavy and the rest that follow will hopefully be a little lighter. Please enjoy and I look forward to your comments.

I’m going to discuss love… the word "love" … or the meaning of it to me at least. What a fake way to capture attention or to make another person feel like you care. We use it so carelessly in our day to day lives for such a powerful word. I wouldn't have said this in the past though.

The word most people mean when they say "love" is "invested" ... instead of, "I love her/him" most people are saying, "I'm invested in her/him." Granted, I'm not saying love doesn't exist, but when you see a couple walking down the street holding hands and being all lovey dovey, the off chance that they'll be together for the rest of their lives is slim. Consider a married couple; think of all the people each of the two individuals dated and had "serious" relationships with before finding each other and settling down. But even marriage doesn't guarantee that the relationship will last. So I ask myself, "What the hell is the point?" and that’s that everyone wants that warmth, no matter who you are, whether you tell yourself you don’t need anyone and life’s whatever, we all want to feel "loved."

I invested, though I called it love at the time, so deep in a girl that I began to lose who I was and even drift away from my family and friends (Family and friends being another subject that will be talked about deeply in the near future). It’s a terrible road to go down though anyone currently walking it will say otherwise. The fact is that when you’re young and invested, you don’t want to lose that investment because it feels like a freedom in a sense that it’s a decision you’ve had a chance to make on your own and you don’t want to say that it was a bad one. I call it “terrible” and nothing else because the opposite (the good road) is one that you’ll ride when you truly find the person who feels the same way you do. Someone who can see through your b.s. and you can see through theirs into the person you and your significant other really are. It’s easy to flirt and date people to find the warmth that we all like to feel once and a while, but when you find the person that does more than provide warmth, that’s when you find love, or at least what I feel love should actually be.

Love is being comfortable, confident, secure, happy, excited, undoubting, emotionally stable, relatable, smart, acceptable, as well as a multitude of other feelings with another person. You have to know the person, inside and out. To be able to call them out when something is wrong and have the ability to explain the way you feel about yourself and her/him at any time, and to be able to sense when this person is feeling different, awkward, scared, or just out of the normal so to speak. These feelings must be mutual. Now I’m not saying that when you meet someone, if it’s meant to be all these things will just “be” for the two of you… no. These things happen gradually, love is something that is built, by two people who enjoy being with each other, and in time come to find that a life with one another is their future. For most these feeling develop faster compared to the other significant other, but in time, if it’s meant to be, both parties will feel this way for each other.

Dating, though I hate to call it this, really is practice. The more you date, the stronger you build yourself up emotionally. Most of the times when you begin to date you find yourself on different levels than the other person. This provides great learning experiences for the both of you. The person more stable and experienced has a lot to offer the person with less experience and can probably grow that person to their level, while the person with less experience has just as much to offer the person with more experience in the way that they can grow a certain patients in him/her. Dating can teach commitment and loyalty and the more one dates, the more one learns about how important these things are. If you are dating someone that you tell others you care about, but you still flirt around and see other men/women as opportunities, you are not ready for love. And that’s why I call dating, practice. The more you see the person you’re dating as the person you want to spend the rest of your life with over anyone else, the more ready you are for love, but be careful for this is how hearts get “broken.”

Love should not make you blind. If you are unaware or ignorant of warning signs and little red flags, you are not in love, you are either obsessed or blind, or both. Be smart in your relationships and learn to know your limits as well as your significant other’s limits as well. Don’t ever be afraid to say that you want to see her/him more or that you need space or want to take it a little slower. If your other really does care about you, they will understand. Regardless, people will get hurt when it comes to dating, and break-ups will occur. Now it’s up to you whether you make this into a good or bad thing. Never put the fault of a relationship not working on either party. Instead, learn from the experience. Breaking up hurts, even more so for the person who didn’t want to, but this is something that always potentially comes with every relationship. Breaking up can be a good thing believe it or not. You can take it with a grain of salt and walk away with all you’ve learned so you can be more prepared for your next relationship. It sounds cheesy, but never lose who you are and always be yourself. People gravitate towards people who are transparent. Faking and lying does nothing but hurt you and cause skeletons to build up behind you. But to stay on topic, don’t change who you are because of a previous relationship. Stay true to yourself and others and you will find your special someone.
~Carl