Lessons in love
We often look back on past love affairs as wasted time and failed relationships, but it’s from these ‘failures’ that we learn the most about ourselves and what we really want in our future.
They say that each person comes into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime. The most exciting (or frightening) thing about each relationship you enter into, is not knowing which of these three things they will turn out to be. Every time we fall in love we believe that it’s the ‘real deal’, that this person is most definitely ‘the one’, which can make it feel exhausting to imagine starting from scratch with someone new and having to walk away from a relationship that you have put your heart and soul into. But the harsh reality is; if it’s dead, you have to walk away.
So life is a learning curve, and your love life is an integral part of it. Don’t fret over time wasted with a person who didn’t turn out to be who you were looking for, or if you weren’t who they were looking for. Being the person doing the rejecting, and being rejected, are equally opportunities for you to grow and become stronger.
Having to be in the horrible situation of ending a relationship with someone can make you feel like you are the worst human being alive, but it’s far kinder to set them free sooner rather than later, and it teaches you compassion like nothing else.
Being rejected is not a barrel of laughs either. You start to question yourself, believe that there is something wrong with you, and that perhaps you are simply not good enough. But you survive it, and it makes you understand and appreciate yourself more. You come to realize that you don’t need that other person to make you happy and that extracting them from your life has made you a more positive and happy person. It can actually be quite cathartic.
It stands true that you learn more from your failures than your successes. And I believe that this is because you spend so much damn time analyzing everything to do with them. “If I’d have been less moody would we still be together?”, “If he’d have been more ambitious could things have worked out for us?” Coulda, woulda, shoulda. How about we accept that our past relationships did not fail to work out because of the way we or they behaved; they simply didn’t work out because we weren’t right for each other?
Remember your first proper boyfriend/girlfriend? You were so ‘in love’, you thought that you would last forever. Our first relationships, although you are probably remembering fondly right now with a gooey grin on your face, were actually the most volatile relationships you will (hopefully) ever have. You and your sweetheart made every mistake in the ‘how to have a relationship guide book’. You tried to run before you could walk, you wanting to share every moment with them, you argued over everything and you tried to live up to the expectations of what you believed fairytale love and earth shattering sex should be. It was exhausting trying to be a proper grown up in a proper grown up relationship.
But now compare the person you were when you first entered the relationship with the person you were when it came to an end (I’m hoping you’re not thinking ‘I felt bitter and twisted’ right now), but even if you are, you will have probably made enough mistakes in that relationship to have learned how to not let them happen again.
So be the cheater, be the liar, be the jealous one, be the used, be the over-emotional one, be the demanding one, be the moody one, be the one who doesn’t share the bed covers. Because as soon as you have played those parts, you can tick them off of your list and take a step closer to finding the perfect relationship that’s out there waiting for you.
Nikki Aaron
