I don’t know about you, but my idea of being in love has always been painted by those sappy rom-coms featuring Ryan Gosling, Gerard Butler, and Leonardo DiCaprio. I always imagined being constantly showered with love, flowers, chocolates, and gifts and being told that if I was a bird, he was a bird, a la The Notebook.
I always pictured that I’d constantly be bombarded with so many love notes that, eventually, I’d have enough to wallpaper our entire house together, paralleling Butler’s love in P.S. I Love You.
I envisioned that if we were on a sinking cruise ship, I’d get the final chunk of floating door frame, sprawl across it, and would eventually find my way to safety all in part due to my completely selfless hunk of a DiCaprio-esque man, just like in Titanic.
But that vision of love is a tad unrealistic. It is flawed which is why I curse movie directors and producers every single day for tainting my idea of love. Love is never as smooth and lovely and rainbow-y and unicorn-y as it is painted in the movies; but once you overcome the obstacles, it is the grandest of all prizes that one can possibly win.
You see, going from being single to being in a relationship is a life-altering transition, and only the most dedicated will survive. It’s almost as if you’re thrown into this Hunger Games arena of love – “May the odds be ever in your favor.” You have to channel your inner Katniss Everdeen and really fight for what you love, and who you love.
You go from completely focusing on yourself from an independent perspective, to now being totally submerged in a partnership.
You have to now become selfless. You have to now become open. You have to now think in terms of not “I” anymore, but as a “we” and an “us.”
Being in a relationship, I now not only worry about my own personal happiness, but my partner’s. Essentially, I’m not truly happy until I see that huge, glistening smile painted across my lover’s face. I now consider my partner when weighing huge life decisions, because, as you know, a partner shares these experiences with you.
I now constantly find myself wondering how he’s doing, hoping he’s having a great day, and wishing that he could be right beside me throughout the day, intertwining his hand in mine, in order to take on the world together – one laugh and smirk at a time.
Sometimes, as stated before, obstacles tend cause a bit of a hiccup in the relationship. For instance, you may not always totally see eye-to-eye on certain things. In other scenarios, your partner may have certain goals that may put a tamper on the relationship – such as moving away to another state for school-related purposes. In other words, a relationship is and never will be perfect.
So again, thank the movie producers and/or Nicholas Sparks’ and John Green’s of the world for warping this idea of perfection in your minds. The perfect, always-happy, never-fighting, everything-is-smiley-faces fantasy is just that, a fantasy.
But that’s the beauty of love. You overcome those obstacles, and once you do, you love that much harder. You realize that there may be differences, and sometimes, it may seem as if the universe is throwing every curveball at you; but once you smack a home-run off of it, together, as a team, you really are unstoppable. The world, as you know it, is in the palm of your hands.
With that, you allow yourself to experience happiness like never before, due in part to having someone there to fill a void in your heart that you never once imagined you had the possibility of getting filled. You finally allow yourself to meet the person that you have been searching, scratch that, longing for.
This pure bliss makes every stress-related headache worth it.
Every single time my partner touches me or speaks to me it is like an explosion of every spectacular feeling known to man.
Every single time my partner glances my way, it’s like a blind man admiring the sun for the first time – he’s utterly mesmerized and in awe. The way his eyes gently pierce into my inner-self, giving me confidence in every arena that I once saw flawed and damaged, is truly beautiful and breathtaking.
And with that alone, every doubt that I ever had, every vulnerability that I’ve ever worried about, is instantly washed away.
So yes, there will be days where you feel like you don’t know how you are going to get past whatever challenge you’re currently facing, and you’re going to want to shrug your head below your shoulders and sigh. But fight for it. Fight for what you love. Fight for your partner, your other half. Then, and only then, will you allow yourself to become elevated and completely intoxicated with all of these chemicals flying around in the air that makes you feel this indescribable feeling of euphoria.
As the Holy Bible of all romance novels, The Notebook, once stated, “So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday. But I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.”
Your partner may not be the perfect Ryan Gosling, Gerard Butler, or Leonardo DiCaprio of the dating realm, but that’s quite alright. Because if you look past the hardships, you learn that your partner can be perfectly imperfect.
The way those women felt in those movies is nothing compared to how my partner makes me feel. This feeling, this jubilant feeling of ecstasy that makes my whole body glow, and makes it feel as if all concepts of the physical world are stopped when I’m with him, and the only thing remaining is this divine connection between our two souls – is something that those actresses should envy, and something that those movie producers could never capture on camera.
