Lessons on Love
Slightly Wiser, Making Better Choices, No Longer Googling "Is this normal?"
Valentine’s Day is BACK, florists are emailing me about their overpriced roses, and marketing departments have put “love” back in the air. Apparently, it’s even going to be -1°C on the day (🤭). Jokes aside though, for something that’s supposedly meant to come naturally, the attempts at “love” I’ve seen are really exposing how unprepared most of us are…
The dust had barely settled on Christmas Day before Valentine’s cards were moved to the front of the stores. As a retired anti-Valentines, its-all-capitalist-propaganda general, I have to admit it’s almost impressive how efficiently Western society lines up these occasions and how we buy into them every single year.
If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you’d know that I (now) view Valentine’s Day as an easy win. Celebrating and honouring your partner on Valentine’s Day is a form of intentionality that makes a deposit into your relationship account and builds up equity.
Only took me over 20 years to learn. #Growth
N.B.: Shameless Plug -
This isn’t a post about Valentine’s Day though; it’s about what I’ve learnt about love over the last 12 months. I’ve mentioned it a few times in the past but for something so central to our existence, why do we assume we would just know how to do it by default?
I believe we must learn how to love, how to be loved and how to be in relationships/married. In no particular order:
Don’t Let Impatience Lead You to Hagar
Anything we force before its appointed time will eventually reveal why God wanted us to wait. We know the story of Abraham; God promised him a son (Genesis 15:4), but they got tired of waiting, so Sarah thought she’d give God a through ball by getting Abraham to sleep with her maid Hagar (Genesis 16:2).
What followed was chaos of the highest order. At one point, Sarah even blamed Abraham for doing what she told him to (Genesis 16:5). But that’s not the point I’m trying to get across; waiting reveals our impatience and our impatience leads to poor choices.
When we’re tired of waiting, we start to rationalise poor decisions. Don’t say it too loud but I reckon the undercurrent is “meh, they’ll do”. Out goes discernment, in comes justification. I am convinced that the moment we feel like we should lower our standards is the moment we need to protect them the most.
We get caught up rationalising poor decisions we don’t realise how ridiculous we sound pitching their alleged good qualities trying to convince our friends, families and sadly, ourselves that the relationship is “right”. Words I pray I never have to hear from a loved one:
“At least he/she doesn’t…”.
Hagar might be a short-term fix but could be a lifetime of misery. I reckon our peace is worth the wait. Don’t let your friends/family convince you your standards are too high. Better to skim the top than scrape the bottom of the barrel.
Assume Good Intentions
In all fairness, this goes hand-in-hand with trust and letting your guard down completely. I get why it’s a challenge.
Have you noticed that when people do things we don’t like, it’s easy to launch ourselves to the conclusion that they did it with malicious intent? And the more time that passes between the incident and addressing it, the more resolute we are in the belief that it was done maliciously?
It’s not wrong per se, but it can be detrimental to our relationships. The same instinct that tries to protect us from threats may incorrectly (and you know what, sometimes correctly) perceive a loved one’s actions as a threat. But instead of protecting us from a wild animal in the jungle, it’s protecting the heart.
Negative assumptions are also a trauma response and a result of old wounds. Where we’ve been hurt in the past, any behaviour that’s reminiscent of it could feel like a warning sign. It could cause us to be on guard. We’re trying to avoid pain and getting blindsided.
When we leap to negative conclusions we often find ourselves arguing with a villain that only exists in our imaginations. Worse still, left unaddressed we end up treating the person like a villain while they’re completely clueless. And we potentially damage the relationship in the process.
It’s ironic; when we mess up, we understand context, nuance and circumstances. When others mess up, it’s part of their character and was intentional. We know our intentions immediately, but the gap between the incident and addressing it, we fill with fear rather than truth.
Stop concluding every mistake is a sign of bad intentions. It might just be a lapse in judgement or maybe they see life differently. We can’t project how we process things onto others because we don’t all share the same context. We also don’t have access to the same information.
That being said, take all this with a pinch of salt. There are real-life villains walking among us; pay attention to patterns of behaviour. We’re not above occasional mistakes but repeated behaviour is worth paying attention to. As I said, there’s an element of trust and letting your guard down needed, but let’s also avoid being naive, delusional or in denial.
Marry Sensible People…
(...with sensible friends)
When the going gets tough, when life is dealing blow after blow, and when we’re at our lowest and our most vulnerable, the people closest to us will have the loudest voices, and they can shape the outcome of your relationship/marriage.
Advice can build a home or burn it to the ground. We don’t need yes (wo)men or people who would hand you the matches. I tried to define who sensible people are in the context of our relationships but it wasn’t as easy as I thought. But in an attempt to narrow it down:
Sensible people are people whose judgment we can trust to protect our future despite our surge of emotions. They keep us anchored.
Being with someone whose judgment we can trust, who surrounds themselves with emotionally mature people who are doing the work, is a major key. People are able to see the bigger picture not just the moment can save us from causing permanent damage based on temporary feelings.
Every relationship will have moments of friction/tension. Escapism is not the solution. Sensible people also aren’t scared to pull you up on your nonsense. Their wisdom cuts through our emotions and if we’re sensible ourselves we can trust that they have our best interests at heart.
If people around can’t hold you accountable, or they’re worried about your reaction if they pull you up on your behaviour, now might be a good time to take stock and ask yourself if you should even be in a relationship.
Make Room for Both Your Feelings
Society has conditioned men to suppress their feelings as a sign of masculinity. It has painted women as the emotional ones. I’m not here to discuss whether it’s right or wrong, or to promote “down with the patriarchy”. I’m simply offering an objective truth; both parties have feelings.
We’re used to being the center of our universe. We see the world through our eyes, process information through our lens and experience through our perspective. Naturally, our emotions can be all-consuming, blocking out how other people feel.
Main Character Syndrome. Our feelings can feel so loud and justified that we deny someone else’s truth if it doesn’t align with what we’re experiencing. We leave little room for their reality, so they end up fighting to be heard, becoming withdrawn and eventually resentful.
I believe a self-centered view of the world is our default. I’m not suggesting it’s okay, it’s just how I view most people. Our pain is greater than theirs and justifies our behaviour. Our intentions were purer than theirs. Our explanation of events makes sense while theirs doesn’t.
Being able to step out of your feelings, temporarily park them or at least make room for other people’s feelings can have a bigger impact than you can imagine. If I had a penny for the number of times people say to me, “they just don’t listen”... I’d have like 30 pennies (I’m not an agony aunt, what did you think i would say? jkjk).
I also think there’s a mistake we make (I’ve definitely been guilty of this, many many times): trying to find the objective truth as it happened and treating it as the holy grail. That’s the proverbial “middle ground” but the reality is there are multiple truths based on perspective.
We can live through the exact same event but have completely different experiences. Objective truth (the event) does not necessarily define the experience. My view is we should develop the ability to hold our needs in one hand, and the other person’s needs in the other and acknowledge they both exist, they’re both valid and both our responsibility.
That’s just me though.
It’s Always Someone Else’s Fault
The good old accountability dodger. If I was to advise anyone of the biggest red flag to look out for when dating, it would be the people who say everything that went wrong in their past relationships was their exes fault. Or those who link every problem in their life to someone or something else’s doing.
I felt so strong about it, I wrote about it: here.
My advice? Run. Accountability is part of the foundation of any healthy relationship; be it family, friendship or romantic partnership. If it’s always someone else’s fault, I promise you, it’s only a matter of time before it’s yours.
It’s hard for some of us to set boundaries, I get it. Setting boundaries with someone who refuses to take accountability is one of the hardest things you have to do in a relationship; they typically view boundaries as an attack.
The boundary itself isn’t the problem; the problem is the consequence of the boundary. It’s hard because we fear losing the relationship and the guilt that may follow. But one thing I know for sure, boundaries are freeing. Spoken from experience.
Concluding
There you have it, five lessons on love I’ve learnt over the last year. Love is a wild ride and figuring out how to do it is imperative. It’s crazy that we believe we’ll just figure it out without hard work. I’m tempted to blame Disney but who doesn’t love a good love conquers all story?
Listen, I’m not a relationship expert, and I know someone somewhere will read that thinking “I know that’s right”; I’m just someone who makes plenty of mistakes, watches others make theirs and takes the valuable lessons from them. I try to avoid repeating mistakes, mine or otherwise.
I hope you experience the kind of love that makes you a better version of yourself.
Free life hack: Valentine themed cards, chocolates, gifts etc will go on sale from February 15th while shops prepare for Easter. Buy what you need to buy in preparation for Valentine’s Day 2027. Life is hard and we’re still in a cost-of-living crisis. Get ahead of the curve, you’ll even beat inflation.
You’re welcome.
As always, make a decision that future you will be grateful for.
Have a great weekend!
CT
