Remember how everyone went gaga when Shah Rukh Khan said,

“Hum ek baar jeete hai, ek baar marte hai, shaadi bhi ek baar hoti hai … aur pyar ek baar hi hota hai.”

All of us agreed and totally bought that idea because it was simple yet so dreamy.

But is there truly a ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of love? I think not.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great if the first time you fell in love with was also the last time. But for a lot of us, the people we once thought we couldn’t live without are a distant memory: a cherished but a distant one, nevertheless.

I mean, if the idea of ‘one love’ were true, I would have still been with my high school sweetheart. (Read: regrets)

A relationship can run its course and then you can be done with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

When I was in college, all I wanted to do was chill and have the time of my life with my boyfriend. All I want to do now is to find stability and be with someone who looks at life seriously.

It’s great if you meet someone who grows up with you exactly the same as you do. But we all know being the exception to the rule is not something that happens very often.

I mean, yeah the thought of having to deal with just one person sounds utopian. 

But does that mean if we fall out of love with that person, we have to keep up with it just because we are scared to do it all over again?

That shouldn’t be the case. At all.

Just because my relationships didn’t last, doesn’t mean that I didn’t love them then. It felt very real to me at the time and it will continue to hold a special place in my heart.

There’s no compulsion that our first try will be our last one. There is no hard rule for it.

The journey of it all starts when we fall in love for the first time. 

We start thinking this is it. The idea that this is the person you’re supposed to spend your whole life with, excites you.

And while we are enjoying our pehla pehla pyaar, we don’t stop to consider that this might not work out.

Our naive inexperienced minds have no knowledge of how a relationship works and so, we think we’re in this for good.

When I had my first heart break, I thought I could never feel the same way again. But like all good things come to an end, so do the bad ones.

I got over the pain of losing out on someone I loved. Because luckily, I came to this realisation that I don’t have to live with this heartache for the rest of my life.

In fact, it becomes easier for you to understand the complexities of a relationship after you’re done and dusted with one.

It does have a lot to do with how you look at this but to be honest, the possibility of falling in love more than once is quite high.

I knew this but experienced it for real when I went away to college.

Now a young adult out in the world on my own, away from home, I was ready to experience everything life has to offer. And on top of that list was romance.

I met a wonderful boy there and he was nothing like the boy I had dated before. And I didn’t mind that.

Life gave me two beautiful years with him and even though I knew I was capable of loving again, he gave me the guarantee that it can happen.

Being in love with him was a different experience altogether but sometimes we just grow out of it.

We were two people at an age when all we do is change constantly.

And like I said before, all good things come to an end, this did too.

But this time, the difference was that I didn’t think I could never love again.

And with each relationship, you become a different person too.

If I have to take a pick whether I was a better girlfriend at 18 or if I am a better girlfriend now, I’d definitely choose the latter.

My last relationship taught me a lot but that doesn’t mean I have to keep whining about it ending. Instead, it gave me a new perspective to my next romance which I can be better at.

And more than often, we don’t even remember how we felt when we were with a certain person. It is all thanks to the fact that we are beings of evolution and our mind and body keep changing.

Our preferences change too. And we start letting go of things and people.

With this, the heart hurts and the heart heals, and that is the beauty of it all.

I am a grown up now with different priorities and ambitions. The way I see life is now is nowhere close to how I saw life a couple of years ago. And my ideal partner doesn’t look like someone I crushed on in my salad days.

 And if the series of falling in and out of love has taught me anything, it’s this:

You can lose out on a person but you will never lose out on your potential to love again.