Don’t rush into love.
You have to know that you don’t have to pressure yourself to fall in love a little too quickly especially when you’re not sure that you’re ready to do so. You have to remember that you don’t have to fall in love if you don’t want to take that plunge just yet. It’s okay if you don’t want to risk making yourself vulnerable and opening yourself up to getting hurt. It’s okay if you want to stay guarded for a bit. It’s okay if you want to just take the time to try and figure out your feelings for now. It’s okay if you want to just try and make sense of the entire situation before you make any rash decisions.
You don’t have to rush yourself into falling in love with someone if you’re not even sure that they’re the one for you. You don’t have to pressure yourself into being in a relationship just because you think you’ll never get this chance again. You shouldn’t have to be hasty in your pursuit of the romantic life that you so desperately want.
A lot of us are hopeless romantics, but that doesn’t mean that we have to let our desperation get to us. Everywhere we turn in this modern world, media tries to tell us everything that we’re supposed to believe about love and relationships. Media tells us that love should always be grand and amazing. We are taught that there is a certain magic that is present in falling head over heels for a person. We are taught to believe that dates should always be a series of intimate moments between two people who have a sexual tension about them. But that isn’t always going to be the case. In fact, reality tells a very different story and that’s okay. We don’t always have to subject ourselves to the expectations that we think everyone else has for us. We have to be realistic with what we can expect from ourselves and our relationships. Our lives don’t always have to be worthy of Hollywood blockbuster narratives. Because the truth is that fantasy is nothing like reality and reality can be so much more beautiful if you just give it a chance.
So don’t feel like you have to force yourself into taking a chance with someone even if you’re not comfortable with them just yet. Just because a lot of other people claim that they know they are in love after just a few days doesn’t mean that it should be the same for you. You can take your time. You have to take your time if you want to. It’s your own life after all and you shouldn’t be living it by anyone else’s standards.
Of course, we all have our personal expectations when it comes to love. We map out that entire narrative in our minds sometimes. We think about how we would want everything to be with the person we love. We think about everything we look for in an ideal partner. We think about what our lives look like when we gain everything that we could possibly want out of love. We all go after the fairytale. We pursue the idea of getting the fairytale ending that we’ve been led to believe that we deserve and in our desperation, we forget about the process that it takes to get there.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the love that we all want for ourselves the perfect, steamy, sustainable love that is filled with passion and intimacy; it isn’t built in a day. They don’t understand that it takes a lot of time, effort, and commitment to get to that kind of love. And you might be one of those people so be careful. You shouldn’t assume that just because you force yourself to fall in love with someone doesn’t automatically mean that you’re going to get the kind of love that you think you need. In fact, if you have to force yourself to rush into things, then it’s highly likely that this isn’t the right love for you at all. Because the truth is this: true love doesn’t have to be rushed.
So just take your time. Let yourself be guarded. Be conservative if you want. Be slow. Be gradual. Be methodical. You don’t have to be diving into the pool headfirst. You can test the waters for a bit. You can just be casual about it if you want. If you’re not comfortable with emotionally investing all of yourself just yet, then that’s okay. Just be comfortable in your own skin and go at your own pace. Be patient. And in the end, when the true love for you does come knocking, then you will thank yourself for not rushing anything.