9 Realizations About Love We Never Have Until It’s Too Late

1. Love cannot be deceptive, malicious or conniving. We are the ones who become those things when we hold onto love for our own selfish reasons, and then let it go when we no longer need someone to fill those spaces within us. It’s not the love that hurts us, it’s everything else that gets in the way.
2. There’s no right or wrong time for love. Usually when someone says something along those lines, it means they don’t want to be with you for one reason or another. People have made love work across continents and through wars and past death. You either will or you won’t.
3. Love is not limited to the romantic definition that we most often associate it with. It is the essence of who we are. It is the fiber of our beings. Our physical bodies react to romantic love the most drastically, and so we almost become addicted to that high for it’s ease-of-access when someone gives it to us. The truth is that love is present in many other simple ways we don’t have enough temperance to reach within ourselves.
4. The only love you need is your own. I know, I know how many thousands of times you’ve probably heard this– but it’s so unbearably true I cannot help but say it again. The truth is that when seeking love, what we’re really seeking is something to make our lives worthwhile. Unfortunately, if you find that foundation in someone else, once they are gone, your building collapses.
5. People get into and stay in relationships for a thousand different reasons that have nothing to do with love. Don’t ever assume you understand. Love, or at least the perception that we have it, seems like an instant cure-all for many of life’s emotional ailments.
6. The best love is the love that changes you and inspires you to be better. You can live with a love that is comfortable, or you can be challenged by a love that moves you forth. I think that people with the most passionate, fulfilling lives are the ones who choose the latter.
7. At any given moment, you can choose love. You will spend your entire life waiting until you think you’re “ready” for it, but that’s nothing more than a ploy to protect yourself because you don’t want to be hurt again.
8. You don’t have to be entirely certain all the time. You are allowed to have doubts. You are allowed to be absolutely terrified but absolutely enamored by someone at the same time. You’re supposed to have issues. You’re going to have challenges. Love is never a clean-cut and easily understood phenomenon. It usually doesn’t make sense, and that’s because you usually can’t use your mind to make sense of love. It’s using the right key on the wrong door.
9. When it comes to love, like many other things in life, you always know in your heart what the right thing to do is, it’s all a matter of having the courage to do it. You know when you should leave. You know who you should be with, and who you shouldn’t. It’s never a matter of not knowing, it’s a matter of letting yourself embrace that knowing despite your mind’s objections. Despite what consequences your irrational, nonsensical love could yield.