It’s so difficult to keep a love alive in a world where there are so many things that can stifle it.
We must all come to terms with the age-old truth that love is never something that is doled out like charity. However harsh that truth may be, you’re just going to have to accept it. You can’t expect to feel like you are entitled to love whenever you want it regardless of how you are. You can’t expect for love to always be present in your life if you don’t work hard for it. There are just too many couples out there who fall into the trap of being complacent and overconfident. They think that just because they’re already in a relationship and are madly in love with one another, everything is going to seamlessly falling into place. They seem be operating under the delusion that all problems in life are just going to magically fix themselves so as long as they love one another. You can’t afford to be feeding into this delusion. You can’t allow yourself to buy into this kind of flawed rhetoric. Love is never promised. Love is never sure. Love isn’t going to stay if you don’t make room for it. Love alone is not enough to solve all of the troubles of the world.
When you get into a relationship with someone, you can’t just decide to take things easy and think that it’s okay to relax. You have to be willing to put in the kind of effort that is actually necessary to maintain that emotional bond and connection that you have with one another. Always keep in mind that your love isn’t invulnerable. Your love isn’t immortal. Your love is still very much prone to damage. You can still be in danger of losing your love especially when you aren’t being careful. Your partner can still choose to leave you without having to give you any moment’s notice. You can’t treat your relationship like some kind of trophy or medal that you work hard to forget and then just prop up on the shelf when you get it. You can’t let it stew. You can’t ignore it and look at it just whenever it’s convenient to you. You can never let up. You can never ease up. Love requires all of your commitment, effort, and attention on a consistent basis. You can’t just choose to work on love whenever it suits you or whenever it’s easy. Love is going to demand so much more from you especially when things get a little difficult.
Love doesn’t operate based on assumptions and guesses. Love can’t be something that is conducted on a hunch or on a whim. You have to get down to the nitty gritty aspects of your romance. You have to be able to tap into each other’s core and gain access to the truth. You can’t just automatically assume that you are meeting your relationship’s expectations. You can’t just automatically assume that you are always living up to the standards that your partner has set for you. You have to be able to communicate to one another on a consistent basis to be able to gauge where the both of you stand in this relationship. You must always be talking to one another about your expectations and you must both be willing to make compromises for the sake of your love. You have to be able to be open and honest to one another about absolutely anything that is happening to you and to your relationship. And with all of that, you must always be making an effort to meet one another halfway. You have to be able to turn your dialogue into something constructive that you can actually build upon. You can’t take a passive approach to love. You can’t just choose to sweep your feelings, problems, or emotions under a rug. You can’t afford to just turn a blind eye to the inconveniences in your relationship. You have to be able to address them head on and you can’t let these things metastasize in your romance like cancer cells. If you leave these stones unturned, eventually, it will end up imploding your relationship.
And yes, it can be so easy to just fall in love with a person. It may have felt totally effortless just falling for the person that you’re with. But it’s another story entirely having to maintain that love throughout the course of a long relationship. It’s easy to fall in love with the way another person is or how they act. It’s easy to fall in love with a person’s smile, personality, and demeanor. But it’s oh so much more difficult to stay in love with someone; to actually make a relationship work with someone. It’s so difficult to keep a love alive in a world where there are so many things that can stifle it.
