Love will never be enough

Falling in love is probably one of the most fantastic and exciting feeling that we can have. The sun shines intensely and warms your body. Birds sing melodies that you forgot. We forget the pain and anger while everything turns to be beautiful and marvelous while you stare their eyes that shine like a jewel making your heart skip beats. Yet some people think that falling in love is the scariest shit ever.

"Love is necessary for a healthy lasting relationship, but only love will never be enough"

In our culture, many of us idealize love. We see as some sort of all-cure for life's problem. Movies, history all celebrate it as life ultimate goal, the solution from all pain and struggle. And because we idealize love, our relationship pays a price for overestimating it.

When you believe that all you need is love, you are more susceptible to ignore core fundamental values like respect, humility, and commitment with people you care about.

Three Truths about love.

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• 1*Love doesn't mean compatibility.*

Just because you fell in love with someone, that doesn't mean that they are going to be a good partner in a relationship, even if it's mutual. Love is an emotional process while compatibility is a logical process and those are like oil and water.

You can fall in love with someone who will treat you bad. Someone who will make you feel worse about yourself. Someone who doesn't hold the same respect you hold for them. Someone who have different ambitions, goals, philosophies, ideas that can clash with our own reality.

I know a few people who said they felt that feeling, that 'spark' and dived their heads in a relationship without thinking twice. Forget that he was born-again an alcoholic Christian and she was a vacuum cleaner of Colombian powder. It just felt right.

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And then 5 months later, when she's throwing his stuff out of the window he's praying to Jesus 20 times a day for her salvation, they look around and wonder, "where did it go wrong?". We all know that was wrong even before it even began.

Make sure when you are out dating and looking for a partner, you have to use your heart and your head. Evaluate their values, how they treat themselves, how they treat people close to them, their ambitions, dreams, and views of the world in general. PS: Don't forget to feel the "spark".

We might not be able to control our feelings, but we control our actions, so make a good use of the pair of legs you have when you get "feelings" with someone if they are totally incompatible with you. But if you think incompatibility isn't a problem, then good luck, just remember that love and compatibility do not walk together.

• 2*Love doesn't solve your relationship problems.

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I had a Long distance relationship and we were in love with each other. We couldn't see each other because of some obstacles and the discussions setting us apart all the time. The fights and drama were there every week, but every time we fought in the other day we were making up and reminding each other how crazy we were for each other and none of these small problems mattered. We were in love after all and all problems were solved just because. So the next three days after making up we were on our best behavior, then after these days, the drama would start again.

Our love made us feel like we were overcoming all problems, but the truth is, nothing ever changed, nothing ever was solved. Our fights repeated. Arguments got worse. The fact we couldn't see each other was so cruel that we avoided making plans since whenever we did something happened and everything went down the sink.

At some point, we got so self-absorbed that we couldn't communicate anymore, hours and hours of talk and nothing said. Nothing solved. Just ignoring problems till we got to a point that we were spending more time silent then talking due to fear of creating a new problem or bringing one from past. The intimacy died. Being honest got so terrifying due to fear of being judged or blamed. Looking back, there was no hope that was going to last, yet lasted for 7 months.

And without any surprise, that relationship froze, and instead of love, all left was indifference. A breakup that marked my chest in pain for a while. And one of the biggest lessons I learned was: While love makes you feel better about relationship problems, the truth is that nothing ever gets solved, it just gets worse.

That's how a toxic relationship works. A roller-coaster of feelings that intoxicate you, and each high better than the last one, and each low is lower than the last one and we only stay when the high worths more than the lows, but unless there is a stable foundation beneath our feet, that rising tide will come and wash it all away.

• 3* Love isn't always worthy of self-sacrifice.

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One of the characteristics of loving someone is that you are able to stop thinking only about yourself and your needs to help and care for another person and their needs as well. But what many doesn't understand is what exactly they are sacrificing and if it's worth it.

Like I shared a piece of my past relationship up there, and in that same relationship, I did everything and even more than I could for her out of love.

My dreams, desires became the same as hers. We used to spend most of the time playing online while we were on Skype calls, and I did everything for her in that game, since was the only form of action I could have since we lived in different continents, sounds silly I know, but trust me, everything. When we were not playing together or talking I was spending all my "Free" time researching about her illness and the issues she had, with the hope I could make her life a little better.

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An average of 12h a day spent together playing and talking, or rather fighting. Being constantly remembered that whatever I did wasn't enough. The fights were the worse, she threw issues I shared with her about my childhood to make me feel bad, never backed down from a discussion even when begged her to just stop and blamed for everything. Slowly I was losing my personality, my identity, my dreams, my ambitions.

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And the funny thing is that when we broke up I felt lost, didn't know what I was or what I wanted, just an empty body, asking himself what now. Without her, that used to be my world.

Was sacrificing my self-respect, my dignity, my time, my ambitions, and my purpose just because I wanted to stay with her. Verbally abused and humiliated, and for almost 30 days crying all night wishing to have her back, pathetic right? But I'm really grateful for that relationship, I got the best gift of my life.

I found myself, finally, I discovered who I am, what I'm made of, what I want, what I don't want, what I can sacrifice, what I can't. The wounds once open now are closed. They stopped hurting and became scars, don't get me wrong, they aren't physical scars and even if they were, they would still be beautiful anyway, a scar that has a story that today I tell with a smile on my face, a scar that is marked the birth of a new me.

It's normal for both sacrifice their own desires, their needs and their own time for each other, and that's healthy and necessary to create a great relationship. But when sacrificing self-respect and one's dignity, one's physical body, one's ambitions and life purpose just to stay with someone, then that love becomes a problem.

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A Loving relationship needs to supplement and support our personal identity, and not the otherwise like damaging or changing who we are. If we find ourselves tolerating disrespect or abuse, then that is exactly what we are doing. Sacrificing part of us, letting our love consume us, and if we are not careful that same love will consume you till it leaves an empty shell, an empty shell that once was us.

I lived the three truths I listed in a single relationship, and today I'm a different person. In essence still the same, but today I respect myself. Today I value myself. Today I love myself. And every day that passes, I'm even better.

We ignore compatibility and we believe that love will fix the incompatibility if there is love. We believe that if we sacrifice more and more, tolerating disrespect and humiliation they will see us and love us as we love them and all problems will go away. But it won't fix, solve or make it right. Love will never fix relationship problems, only two people committed to fixing a problem will fix a problem. Compatibility isn't the same as love, but in some cases, it can slowly find a middle ground when two are committed to doing it. Sacrifice has to be mutual, but one should never sacrifice self-respect, dignity, ambitions and life purpose just to be with someone.

It might sound strange to hear this, but you can fully enjoy the love in your life if you choose to make something else more important in your life than love.

You can fall in love with a wide variety of people through your life, with good and bad people for you, you can fall in love in healthy ways or not. You can fall in love being young or old. Love isn't scarce.

But your identity is, so is your self-respect, so is your dignity. There are many different loves to find in your life, but when you lose your identity, your self-respect, your dignity, your physical body or your ability to trust... they are really hard to get back.

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Love is a wonderful experience. One of the best experience life has to offer. It's something that everyone should feel and enjoy. But just like all other experience, it can be good or bad. Don't let love define who you are. Don't let love consume you. Because the moment you sacrifice our identities and self-worth, we lose love and ourselves.

You need more than love in your life. Love is beautiful. Love is necessary. But love will never be enough.

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