The hardest part about figuring out love is learning that love is not Hollywood, love is not perfect and love is not the same for every couple or person.
My relationship with my boyfriend will never mirror or come close to the same as another couples. That is for so many reasons. Who I am, who he is, how we think and what we have been through. We are not Hollywood...but our story would make a great movie one day.
When we first started dating, I had unspoken expectations of what love was going to be like. That I would wake up every morning to "I love you" texts and have a signed and sealed letter from God saying "Here he is, your future husband. Everything is going to be perfect!"
Now, don't get me wrong. When I saw my boyfriend for the first time, I had this undeniable voice in my head telling me I was going to really like him, but, I told myself no. I was interested in another guy (at the time) and I was not going to have a crush on two guys...ever. So I shut it down. He pursued and quickly won me over.
Just because I heard this and believe that I have found an absolutely incredible guy. It does not mean our relationship is perfect, or that we are.
First off, I am a worrier. My mind is constantly turning and struggling to figure out what my next step is. I always wonder if I am doing something right, if I am going down the right path or if I can commit to something that can potentially be the right future for me. Then, I worry if that future is the one that I have worked for, need, deserve or the one people believe I deserve.
With that being said, you can imagine that me being in a relationship can cause me to become a little in-my-head at times. Which, as you probably can easily figure out, would also cause me to over analyze ever move, definition of love and what other couples felt love was.
It sounds a little crazy but growing up in a church setting, love was always explained to me as unconditional, never failing and so easy to recognize. Love was perfect. A man and a wife. No questions asked. When you found the one, you absolutely knew and life would be incredible until the day you die.
What the church was telling me and what I experienced were two completely different things. Even what I experience now is not what I was shown through Christianity or, in that case, through hollywood.
I also work in the film industry. So as the church said "perfect", Hollywood meant "the most dramatic you can be is love." I help film and watch drama in love stories unfold all day long. We watch couples fight, hook up, cheat, go through hell with each other and then end up back together and in absolute love.
Everyone wants love. Everyone is hungry for love. But what is love...
As a verb, LOVE is to feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to (someone). As a noun, LOVE is a an intense feeling of deep affection.
When I ask my friends what their definition of love is, I get told the most romantic stories on the planet. They have social media profiles to match showing them together for years and "all of it has been worth it." "It has been a breeze."
However, the definition of love changed depending on if they were single, if they have been in a long term relationship before or if they wanted a committed relationship at all.
So with a constantly changing definition, how do you know you are in love or that your partner is in love with you? You unspoken expectations of what you have always believed love should be could leave you not giving a great person a chance. Not because they don't love you BUT because they love you differently than you expected.
Being in a relationship is complicated enough. You are choosing to hand over your heart to someone and asking for nothing in return. It is the biggest JEOPARDY game any human could ever play. Especially today, in our society.
For a worrier like me, the act of loving someone never becomes hard. Only the act of believing they are loved in return does. Not out of spite but due to past experiences or over analyzing, we become concerned that the feelings of the other's towards us will always go away. (It is a mind shift you have to create within yourself to break this way of thinking. It's simple to change but you have to do it if you want to have a successful relationship with your significant other.)
This became my new battle to overcome. Especially dating a guy who loves differently than me in every way.
I show my love through gifts or written words. I am a person who constantly wants to be in contact with you if I am in love with you. If you aren't having a great day, I want to know. If you got to talk to an old friend, I want to know. I'll text to ask how you feel and the phrase "overuse I LOVE YOU"...I am pretty sure I take that to the extreme.
I'll do anything for my partner. I'll go out of my way to say hi or bring him food or make him know that I am thinking of him.
So you can imagine that when we don't show our love in the same way, I quickly started to worry. My mind, early on, raced. I start to wonder if he loved me or if he cared about me or if he was going to leave me. I mean, because if we weren't having every cute and romantic moment that everyone else was having and if I wasn't getting presents or social media posts by him then what was love?!
AKA: The Expectation Gap.
My guy loves me in such a different way than I love him. And at first, I did not recognize it because I have always been the one pursuing someone else. I expected to be loved how I loved him because that was the only romantic love I knew; the love I gave. I expected to have surprise visits, random notes or roses by the door after a long day of work. I EXPECTED text messages and presents and 8 hour phone calls.
You know what I got instead?
So! Much! Better!
Where I give gifts, he gives compliments. I don't think he has ever seen me and not given me a compliment punctuated with a kiss. I've learned that I really enjoy looking nice for him. Even if he usually sees me in sweats or gym clothes, I like putting in some effort to look good by his side. Not because of a certain status but because he has lifted and spoken life into a part of my heart that I didn't know was needing attention. I didn't know that I needed to hear that "I am beautiful" or "I am talented" or that "I am his." Yet, now, I feel like I am, with him by my side or out on my own. He helps show me, daily, that I am wanted and I am valuable and that I am worth it. As an individual, I am worth it.
Where I text or write my words (obviously, I have a blog), he calls me. I used to hate phone calls. I would get anxious and not want to answer, unless it was family. I never found value in phone calls. They weren't able to be saved. My guy though, he likes calling me. He likes putting in the time to hear my voice, tell me everything about his day, what he is excited about and how much he has planned for the upcoming days. He finds value in voices, stories and unscripted interactions. He finds value in hearing how my day has gone. Nothing makes a girlfriend feel more loved than getting to actually spend time communicating with their boyfriend and laughing about random moments. I look forward to his phone calls. I look forward to hearing about his day and joking or even speaking on more serious topics. I love figuring things out with him.
I have an urge to show things on social media, he has incredible warmth. Obviously, if you see that I blog, you know that I enjoy positing on social media. Especially instagram. Being in the entertainment industry, a photographer and an adventurer all helps feed the desire to post for people to see. If we are speaking honestly, like every girl, I want to brag about my relationship a little bit. I want to share our cute moments. He, though, rather not post anything about relationships. (Which, at first got to me.) Instead of him posting on instagram, I learned about his unconditional warmth. He constantly lets me know he is by his side. He will spin me around and give me a kiss in the kitchen. He will hold me tight and make me laugh in-between episodes of The Walking Dead. He never complains about his foot or leg going asleep when I lay on his lap. He always grabs my hand and always opens every door for me. He may never show our relationship online or post about it, but his cute moments and surprise date nights are more than any social media could handle. He has a way with words.
These things used to bother me because I looked at it so negatively. I would hate that he didn't text or didn't give gifts or post online. How could I know he loved me? Sounds silly huh? Now, I see that it absolutely was. I wanted the perfect relationship and put so much value on those things. He had to love me how I expected...and when he wouldn't, I would get so frustrated and felt like I wasn't even in a relationship.
However, once I set my ego aside and looked at HOW he WAS loving me, I found my appreciation for him grew exponentially. I felt more loved by him. I felt more honored and respected by. I felt like my expectation gap had diminished. I could see the incredible value in what he said and the actions and effort he put in in his own way.
My man has made me stronger. When we started dating, the biggest thing we didn't want was to be seen as one person. We know so many couples that are always together, one with the other. We never see or think of them singular individuals. When we invite one, we know we are inviting both. We didn't want to become that. We didn't want to loose our identities. We want to build each other up and help each other become the best person they can be. Together.
We aren't perfect and never have been and certainly never will be. We have a complicated past but a great present and a fun future. We have learned to love each other through our pasts, flaws and moments of sass or frustration. Which, we usually understand to come from exhaustion or hunger...which with us both being hungry at almost every moment of every day, you can see why we had to figure out this understanding very quickly on.
It isn't easy. Loving someone is terrifying in the greatest way. And, in all honesty, loving someone who thinks and analysis the world in such a different way than me is one of the biggest blessings God has ever given me. I never want to stop growing and stop learning. He is making that true even in my relationship.
He loves differently then me. He thinks differently than me. Yet, he respects how I feel. He listens to what I think and how I process life. He loves me despite all the flaws I have...physical or internal, and he creates an environment of trust where I know I can say anything and we can work through it. I also feel like we both have time to be ourselves and still feel like we are each other's number one. We don't have to question it. In fact, it is so easy for me to shut down jealousy just because of how he does love me.
I'm learning. That's all I can say. Every day I have my doubts and insecurities but I'm learning that everyone and every relationship does. No one is perfect and neither is any relationship. With the world filled with so much uncertainty, it's hard to give up everything. My expectation gap for relationships was sourced from always being told in church that when I "meet the one, I would know." That God would make it 100% clear that I had found the right person...the ONLY person for me.
I know now that love is a choice you get to choose. You get to choose a partner to go through life with. You decide to love them for better, in worse and make the effort to stay together even when you are old and gray. I am not perfect and I find comfort in knowing my partner has flaws too. We have things to work on together and help each other through. I find myself closer to God through my romantic relationship. I pray more. We go to church more. I have questions, concerns, moments of fright that only God can cure that I would never have if I didn't make the choice to fall in love with the man I am with. If I didn't get to choose him. Sure, God lead us together but it was our decision to take the next leap of faith and get to know each other in a much deeper level.
I found my own definition of love.
True love is a choice. I'm becoming closer to my Father and becoming a stronger me because of my relationship. In return, I hope to make him feel the same way as well. Which, in the end, if we focus on God, we will never end up in a place where we are not better versions of ourselves.
Love is faith. I have faith in God, therefore I can have love and choose to be in love with someone who challenges me, supports me, cares for me and shows me his love in a different way than I show him.
Like I said, we aren't perfect BUT I know that I have never had a single day where I have looked back and regretted spending any part of a day with my Bébe. Once I stopped looking for perfection and started appreciating who he actually was and how he expressed himself to me, I became to appreciate him more than I ever expected.
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