Love is a wonderful drug. It can be truly amazing to find it, and to give in to it—to soak in its enigmatic powers and revel in the feeling that this. Is. It. To feel as if you’ve finally unlocked the secret to happiness. That you’ve discovered purpose in a potential life partner.
But love won’t fix your life.
Lasting love is certainly possible, but not if you expect love to do all the work for you. And not if you refuse to understand love’s limits.
Love doesn’t transform your entire reality. It doesn’t make you a different person, solve all your problems, or erase your past mistakes. If anything, it creates additional struggles. Love isn’t always pretty. It can be downright ugly. It isn’t a Band-Aid for emotional despair. In fact, it wreaks havoc on people’s psyches in a lot of cases. It isn’t a reason to live.
We want love to be greater than it is. We want it to be this transcendent force that unites us as humans beings, even as it tears us apart. We want it to make life worth living. We want it to heal our pain.
But the truth is, YOU have to do all of that for yourself.
The life you lead is determined by the sum of the choices you make. Some of those choices relate to the people you decide to love. But so many others have nothing to do with love at all.