L-O-V-E
That four-lettered word with a concept as giant as planet Earth itself.
The feeling that makes us feel like a billion bucks. The thing we’re all desperately looking for. And the one thing that is the hardest to find.
While looking for the right partner has always been one of the greatest chase that a human undertakes, the problem with our generation is quite different.
We grow up internalising the idea that love is all encompassing. We feed on novels that tell us about cheesy gestures and movies that show us couples fighting the world to be together. Add to it the various dating apps that make us believe that we’re just going to find the right person who will give us the tingles and happy, lovey days.
And boom! Real life hits us smack in the face: everyone is hooking up and no one really wants a steady relationship but behind this big facade of being detached and commitment phobic, we’re all just looking for love.
We’ve become this generation that wants love but is also aware about the various other options available and this confusion is messing with our love life quite massively.
My best friend told me about a guy she’d gone on a couple of dates with. The way she smiled while talking about him clearly in indicated a connection. They met at a mutual friend’s birthday and hit it right off. He managed to make her laugh, they were on the same wavelength regarding lifestyles and he liked to surprise her with chocolates! I asked her why she wouldn’t make it official then?
“Because what if there’s someone even better out there?”
They now fight about the ‘grey area’ their relationship is in. They like each other but do not want to eliminate the possibility of meeting someone else too. One goes for a date and the other one lives in anxiety about what exactly happened. What started on a wonderfully prospective note is now just taking a massive emotional toll on both of them.
You see, we have Tinder, Facebook and a host of other apps that make it very easy to find a connection.
There are so many people out there you can fall in love with. But finding a connection and nurturing that connection to last a lifetime are two very different things.
Falling in love is the easier part but staying in love is when it becomes tough because you’re painfully aware of the alternatives but blissfully ignorant of the effort that goes into love.
The moment it gets even slightly tougher, we bail out and start looking for another person. We begin, once again, the search for that perfect person who will put stars in the sky for us. Till we realize that they don’t. We come face to face with another person’s flaws, and pack our bags because love is easy to find, right?
But here’s the truth: you may have a lot of options but they’re all temporary.
There’s only one person who will listen to you, care for you and most importantly, value you. There is only one person who will give you a healthy relationship with emotional stability. The one person will pamper you, do the cutest things for you and will give you all the reasons to stick around.
And that’s why, my millennial friends, don’t take such people too casually.
Value the connection you have with that one person, respect them and reciprocate their effort. We all do get lucky in love but only once in a while, and when that does happen, we need to value it. Concentrate on that one single person instead of worrying about the whole lot of people you might be missing on.
