A Little Something On Love

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."

I have no idea why I decided to write this post; it's far from my usual kind of thing and it's partly made up of something I wrote on my laptop a while ago just for the joy of writing. I suppose it seemed as good a time as any to put something a little different out there; something positive and yet completely unrelated to anything happening in the world right now. 

The past few weekends of no plans have also given me a lot of time to reflect, realise what's important and for some reason that means I now fancy bashing out a rather personal post about my thoughts and feelings on love and what it means (to me, anyway).

For as long as I can remember I've seen love portrayed in books, in music and in films as something so powerful it has the ability to make you ecstatically high on emotion, yet also the ability to crumble you into tiny painful pieces within seconds. Many a time I've thought well that's not real life though is it or proper relationships aren't so intense. It was difficult to imagine that level of emotion without having experienced it for myself. But I've discovered that there's a reason love is portrayed that way; because it's REAL.

Real love is beautiful and raw, it leaves you vulnerable and open to both happiness and pain.

Real love is feeling someone else's pleasure, discomfort and emotion as vividly as if it were your own.

And above all, real love is just pretty bloody lovely isn't it?

Love is as much about you as it is about the person you love. Loving someone else requires hard work within yourself; it forces you to compromise and examine the parts of yourself that aren't as nice as you thought. It forces you to admit you're wrong and take it on the chin (which is actually quite difficult when you're as stubborn as I am).

Real love requires you to lose all pride and superiority. 

Real love requires you to both forgive and apologise with meaning.

I've often heard that to truly love someone else you have to love yourself first. I don't believe that's completely true; not loving yourself probably just makes loving someone else that little bit harder when you're in a constant battle with your own head (although in this day and age, who isn't?)

I do believe however, that loving someone else can actually help you start to love yourself. Placing that value on someone else to make them feel important, secure and best of all happy helps you achieve a certain level of love towards yourself simply for having the ability to make someone else feel that way.

Real love makes you feel good about yourself.

Real love is joy in making someone else happy.

Real love is allowing someone to bring the best out in you.

Real love is a journey, not just for two people but for yourself as well.