Love. Whoever associated it with cheesy symbols and photographs and the whole array of love dovey products was way off the mark. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a sucker for romance. I read plenty of romance novels and watch sappy movies. But I’ve discovered that love really can’t be tied into an easy parcel. Love is messy.
Love Is Messy
Love gives us strength, but it also makes us vulnerable. Real relationships (and I don’t just mean the romantic kind) call for us to show our true, messy selves. To reveal to the other that we are not perfect.
Having been married 11 years now, I can safely say that my husband and I still working on allowing all our vulnerabilities to show. It takes courage to lay your feelings out and show how needy you are. It requires you to dare greatly to give the other permission to call you out when you are wrong.
While we need to make space for the other and not try to manage their lives and emotions, we also need to be real about our own feelings. No tiptoeing around the other to make sure that s/he is comfortable at the cost of losing oneself.
I have walked away from relationships when I have found that the other person is not ready to go deeper into herself/himself and be challenged.
If you can't show me who you really are, when I am revealing vulnerable self to you, then our relationship will be a very surface one and that's not what I want.Click To Tweet
Really loving someone is not easy. True love demands that you show your real self, imperfections and all. It also urges you to give the other space and time to reveal his real self. S/he must be able to trust you with her/his vulnerable self. Love is patient, kind and sometimes hurts, but it’s always worth it.
Love is tears. Love is arguments. Love is fighting to be yourself while letting the other be himself. Love is very messy. But love is also what will allow you to grow and bloom. It is what will give you roots and wings.
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That is so true! Love is never easy. There are always bits and pieces that can never be put together.
The beauty is attempting to work on ourselves both separately and together!
Well -said, Corinne! Love is never easy but always worth it. 🙂
It sure is!
I think this is something that is so important. “No tiptoeing around the other to make sure that s/he is comfortable at the cost of losing oneself.” I used to do this all the time, till I realised I was compromising my very being.
Such a beautiful write up. I’m married for a month short of seven years now. We have seen the happiest of times together and had each other’s back during low phases. But what made us sail through is our comfort with and mutual respect for each other. That for me is love.
I so agree with you, Corinne! Love is about so much more than hearts and roses and romantic date nights! But you know you’ve found it when you can be yourself in all your faulty glory and know you’ll be supported and loved anyway.
Yes! There is so much grit and courage to a love that endures.
So beautifully written and true! I used to work with a woman who married and divorced and married up and made it clear that she was not looking for a deep relationship just a purse. How sad. Lost touch when she moved with husband 3.
Love is indeed messy (and not at all cheesy). My husband and I, married almost 44 years, have been through a lot together and we grow and change. I hope our love can stay as our strength, even as we are currently being tested with the continued serious illness of his mother.
It’s complicated but love is worth it in the end.
Love is indeed so messy. It’s like the greatest dare in life. It also is about protective instincts. When we are ourselves feeling vulnerable we still feel like protecting our partners.
Very well said Corinne! Everyone will relate to it, because the journey of love from eyes to the heart goes through this mess and finally rewards us with strong roots and wings! Loved reading it!
I like what you said about love going from the eyes to the heart, Sheela.
Couldn’t agree more Corinne. It requires more than just guts though to walk away from messy relationships. Often it is easier said than done….
Actually, I wasn’t talking about walking away at all, Sunita!!
Really ? I thought you said we should walk away from toxic relationships because love can be messy …. ooops I’d better start doing Comprehensions again 😉
Well said. Love isn’t easy or even pretty at times. Revealing your real self to anyone is perhaps the hardest because you risk his/her judgement. Only a rare love, or one that has stood the test of time can look beyond it.
Couldn’t agree more. Love makes us know us and then do things that are true to our personality without the fear of being judged or taken for granted.
I have to read Brene Brown 🙂
Its amazing that two opposite qualities- vulnerability and strength can exist together in one single emotion. No wonder love is messy. Often we try to balance this out, but well love being messy, it always tilts to one side more often
A beautiful and thought-provoking post, Corinne! It has taken me more than two decades to decipher what love truly means and how different we all are from one another in the way we manifest this love to each other! It has taken me years to figure it all out, and I do agree that it is messy! I have found ‘Love’ to be complex, often misunderstood and yet, revelatory in many ways.
A fresh perspective on the many layers of love and not pushing one’s boundary to be each other’s strength can lead to disharmony in relations. It offers a fresh outlook.