Romantic relationships are a lot of work, yes, but they aren’t completely devoid of hope.
It’s an age-old discussion that seemingly has no end. How far should you be willing to go to chase after a person in love? How much of yourself should you be willing to commit to fighting for someone you love to love you in return? We’re all familiar with these questions. When we’re caught in these emotionally compromising predicaments, we try to rationalize our actions by saying that we have a legitimate shot at winning them over. We tell ourselves that we just have to be patient, and eventually, they’re going to realize that we’re people who are actually worth falling in love with. We can’t afford to rush it. We can’t bail or give up too easily. We just have to be willing to stick things out because things are going to go our way eventually if we just learn to stick to the plan. We just have to leave them subtle hints about our true intentions; about how interested we are in them. We just have to make sure that they understand where we’re coming from and how we feel. We just have to prove to them how long we’re willing to wait for them to be ready to fall in love with us. These are things that we constantly tell ourselves; things that we usually use as defenses to whenever people start questioning our actions.
And as you read all of these things to yourself, you slowly start to realize just how sad and pathetic it all sounds. It makes sense to some extent. You should always be willing to be patient and resilient in your pursuit of a person’s love. But also, on the other side of the coin, should you really be wasting so much time and energy on someone who is practically incapable of doing the same for you? You are essentially putting your entire love life on pause for a single person who couldn’t care less about your feelings. Is that something healthy or is it self-destructive and toxic behavior?
Going after a person isn’t necessarily the most fulfilling or worthwhile experience that a person could ever go through. A vast majority of people won’t enjoy the experience of having to bear the anxieties and insecurities that come with waiting or something that may never arrive something that may never happen. The uncertainty brings with it a certain emotional pressure that is just begging to be released and discarded. It’s disheartening when you give devote so much of your emotional capacity into a relationship with someone who isn’t willing to do the same. It gets tiring when you’re the one who has to always try so hard to keep a conversation going; when you’re the one who keeps planning and setting up dates, when you’re the one who has to make sure that the experience is actually worthwhile for the both of you. It’s disheartening when you never seem to be with someone whose levels of effort and commitment are ever able to match your own.
It’s a very discouraging ordeal when you have to go after a person who you seemingly have no shot with. You maintain a hope that is fleeting and it’s getting harder and harder to sustain that hope as time goes by. You develop a sense of blind optimism wherein you deliberately shun reason and rationality out of the equation; wherein you rely solely on your heart’s desire. It can become especially discouraging to know that you’re practically killing yourself to make someone notice the best parts of you even though they probably should have seen it by now. It’s heartbreaking to know that the parts of yourself that you are most proud of just go unnoticed and unappreciated by a person who you are so emotionally invested in. It’s very tiring when you keep on going after someone who just doesn’t want to be reached when you keep chasing an ideal that just doesn’t want to be caught.
The truth is that romantic relationships are never designed to be as simple as regular friendships. Most natural friendships are low-maintenance. They don’t really require much effort to initiate or to sustain. But that’s never the case with romantic relationships. Everything is so complicated from the start to the middle and finish. And maybe that’s why romantic relationships are also the most fulfilling and meaningful. Maybe that’s why they’re just so precious because of just how hard you have to work to have one.
But at the end of the day, they shouldn’t be so hard either. Romantic relationships shouldn’t feel so impossible. Romantic relationships are a lot of work, yes, but they aren’t completely devoid of hope. You should never be afraid to chase after a love but make sure that it’s a love that you actually have a real shot at having.
