Love is a beautiful thing. So many movies made about the topic, the inspiration for so many poems and songs and books, yet still it feels unique to each person and it feels new every day. That is an amazing thing. The feeling of knowing you have someone you could always turn to whenever you need them, the thrills you get from making them happy, the joy you get from spending time with them, not necessarily doing something important and there are some Differences Between Lust and Love.
The ability to hold conversations for long hours without getting tired of each other. The assurance that you have someone who would always be there, of having a support system. Someone to come home to after a long hard day, that indescribable feeling of experiencing a love that is too big to be put into any love song.
However, loving also has its setbacks and challenges, it’s not always easy and sometimes it’s better to let someone go. It is hard to decide to love someone because we are human and we all make mistakes. And not everyone is as tolerant as should be, we all have things that irritate us, seemingly little things like where on the tub of toothpaste it should be squeezed.
Relationships built over a long period with so much effort and persistence could fall apart for the flimsiest reasons. But still, we love, because love is an important part of our existence because relationships with the people around us are what build us up and nurture us and keep everything balanced in our lives.
Loving someone comes in stages, and there is the thrill of new love where you’re still both high on the feel-good hormones and you can’t see each other’s flaws, this could be called the honeymoon phase. It’s beautiful, it is characterized by spending lots of time together, being unable to get enough of each other, being unable to get your hands off each other, wanting the whole world to know you’re with someone, having little to no fights, butterflies in the belly, – and you’re high on oxytocin.
How long this phase lasts varies from relationship to relationship, it could be as long as five months, or as little as two weeks. Both of you are putting on your best behaviour and being extra tolerant and super-duper loving and caring and supportive. He seems to get you so well, she seems like she understands your deepest flaws but loves you all the same.
You never want it to end, what you have feels like it’s the best thing that could happen to anyone in the world and you’re on a high that doesn’t wear off after a few hours. It could be exhausting, but like an adrenaline rush, you don’t even feel the exhaustion. At this stage, you might be prioritizing your relationship over other aspects of your life but it doesn’t even feel like it’s such a bad thing. First Sight Love is an Illusion or Exist Living life feels like you’re floating on clouds of cotton candy, and you want it to stay this way forever, don’t we all know?
Then somehow, all too soon you’re in stage two where you’re just starting to realize that maybe your partner isn’t as perfect as they seemed a few weeks ago. Now, this is a crucial stage in any relationship, and how you deal with the issues that come up now will determine how long the relationship will last and how good it’ll be.
You might fight a lot, you’d struggle to make up for the time you lost while ignoring the other parts of your life, and you might ask yourself a few times what exactly changed and why they’re suddenly not as desirable and cute as they used to be. Nothing changed dear reader, your brain just stopped producing more than enough Love Hormones.
So now you’re no longer chemically driven, and you have to face reality and make rational and deliberate decisions about whether or not you want to stay in the relationship. You have to work for it in this stage, get over all the misunderstandings and petty fights and try to work out something stable and long-lasting, in which you’d be happy and fulfilled.
The last stage, which you can only have if you somehow make it past stage two, is where you’ve achieved some level of stability, and you’ve come to understand each other. You don’t get too comfortable around each other, and you do things from time to time to keep the spark burning because loving someone is a conscious decision, a deliberate effort.
Yes, you have a choice. You can wake up every day and decide that comes what may, I’ll love this person. You could tell yourself “No matter how annoying he/she is and how hard he/she makes it, I’d love him/her anyway.” And you can also decide not to. It’s all on you, no matter what your mind makes you think. In this last stage, your relationship would probably be the envy of people around you because somehow you make it work and that’s awesome. Everyone loves a happy, stable relationship.
Love is a Good thing, but it’s hard at times. And it doesn’t always work. But you can surely decide to make it work, to decide that after such a long time together, you can still look at your S/O and decide that they’re your favourite chapter in the book of your life. That is what I call love.
Author’s bio
Hi Dear, I’m Olubode Josephine, a student of veterinary medicine at a Nigerian university whose life dream is to be a writer who makes significant impacts in the lives of the people who come across her works.
I love love, I love people, and I adore a good relationship. I hope reading my article helped you. You could contact me at olubodejosephine781@gmail.com if there’s anything you’d like to talk to me about.
