real love
Saw this on someone's IG today, and it really resonated with me. i think it's so easy to be lazy, and the euphoria and giddiness you feel for a new paramour is so amazingly easy and addictive. real love is that feeling that you will love the other person and that they will love you, no matter what. even after fights, even in tough times, even when they make you cry or you say things you don't mean in the heat of the moment. real love takes work, takes time, takes tenacity. i think anyone in a successful relationship will tell you that they work at it, that they don't take the other person for granted, that they have to remember to be considerate and caring and really live for that other person, even if it is not something they are used to doing by nature. real love is sacrificial, full of compromises, and you have to dig your heels in and really declare your love.
it's also a two-way street, and that's a non-negotiable. i think, in the past, i've been a repeat offender of loving too freely, without looking for those reciprocal signs of love from my past boyfriends. i gave and gave and gave and gave until i was a withered shell of a person, bitter, tired, cynical, hopeless and sad, hoping they would one day reciprocate by the sheer will of my love. but that's not how love works. if you're killing yourself just to get that other person to love you, you'll eventually just end up killing your soul.