Sarah, a 28-year-old lady, works in a shoe store where she met Will, a 30-year-old gentleman. She meets Will and invites him for a drink together, to get better acquainted. They meet, exchange and laugh. Everything seems to be running smoothly so far. As the days go by, they begin to grow feelings for each other. Not a day would go by without her thinking about Will.

A few days later, Will invited her to the local bar and mentioned that he had a surprise for her. During this date, he decided to tell her how he felt about her.

The two love birds then started dating and doing activities like any normal couple. It turns out that they loved each other and saw each other regularly.

Despite Will’s bossy nature, Sarah still decided to marry him.

A year after their marriage, the relationship seemed a little stalled. As the emotional peak of the marriage dissipated, reality began to set in as the days went by.

With the initial level of excitement having dropped a notch, Will would get angry when Sarah didn’t make him dinner, as well as ransack the house when she delayed at work due to an unexpected event. He then began to return to his pre-wedding habits, staying with his buddies until late at night playing cards to show he was in control. Sarah, who found herself clinging to a false hope, continued to endure these torments. Worse still, she approached her friends to find out how she could sacrifice even more to make things work between her and Will.

The truth is, it won’t work between them.

Some people get together today, start arguing the next day and break up a few months later. Others still put up with feelings that get worse every day. The flame that once brought them together vanished as if by magic.

Some women say they can’t recognize the man they fell in love with. Other men say they no longer recognize the woman who stole their heart.

In response to a bad experience, some women decide not to open their hearts anymore, other men decide not to fall in love anymore.

Things keep getting out of hand because people don’t know what they are really facing.

With today’s society, many of us idealize love, seeing it as a magic cure for many of our problems. We see it as the miracle solution to that shortcoming that tickles us every morning.

Once in our hands, we then develop unrealistic expectations about what love really is and what it can do for us, forgetting the fundamental values such as respect, humility and dignity that make us who we really are.

These unrealistic expectations then end up sabotaging the very relationships we hold dear.

Let me get you started.

Love doesn’t mean “you’re meant to be together.”

Just because you fall in love with someone doesn’t mean they are a good long-term partner for you.

It is absolutely possible to fall in love with someone who will treat you badly and make you feel like shit without having any respect for you.

It is also possible to fall in love with a person who has values, goals and visions that are completely contrary to our own.

It is also possible to fall in love with someone who will create happiness as well as unhappiness for us.

This is the first sad reality that you will have to digest.

When I observe a little bit what happens in many couples, I can attest that most of them are built on emotion alone. They experienced this emotional desire and therefore decided to get together, ignoring the true realities of the person in front of them. Everything they did in their daily lives, all their habits, all their bullshit, no longer mattered to them because they were in love.

Then, a few months later, the crap came back. Bringing everyone’s true realities out into the open. At that moment, they say to each other, “But what happened? What did I do to deserve what is happening to me? »

The truth is that it went wrong before it even started.

Love is a feeling that shouldn’t drive your actions, you have to follow it with your mind. If you leave it alone, it will lead you to a destination that may startle you negatively. So when you choose to be with someone, make sure you use your mind to assess the person’s values, the way they treat themselves, the way they behave with those around them, their visions, their goals, and anything else that will help you make the right decision. Although you will only be able to know what the person displays about himself or herself, it is enough to get a brief idea of the life of your potential future partner.

For once, take a moment to let go of your emotions and really discover the individual in front of you. If it appears to be the right one, you will avoid the phenomenon that most couples experience. If you see that your daily routine won’t fit, rather than trying to change something in your life right now, let it go and move on.

After all, if you get in a relationship with the wrong man or woman, that person has the power to ruin much, if not all, of your life.

Apart from that, there is one thing that slowly wrecks most couples over time. This is emotional dependence.

Love does not mean “you are emotionally dependent on each other”.

When I was still very young, I spent two years with my first girlfriend.

At the time, we loved each other madly, or at least that’s what we thought love was. We would call each other three times a day and then see each other every week. We would talk at night until the wee hours of the morning, whispering in each other’s ears those sweet little words that I’m sure you know. Then came a moment when we could no longer stand missing each other. Being late in telling each other that he loved the other gnawed at the bottom of our hearts. It had become almost obligatory for one of us to consistently express our feelings for the other.

At this point, we had developed a certain dependency for each other, commonly known as ’emotional dependency’. This dependency was becoming more and more prevalent, day by day. A simple delay in the response of one in the text messages made the other lose all his cognitive abilities. The burden was becoming more and more unbearable to the point that the love that had brought us together in the first place ended up destroying us internally.

When I think back, I see this poor young man and this poor young girl trying to fill an emotional void by thinking that the other will provide them with the missing piece of the puzzle. Unable to love each other and deal with the lack of love and affection, they find themselves expecting a lot from each other.

The point is that if you don’t love yourself, don’t expect the other person to do it for you. To enjoy being with someone, you have to enjoy being alone. This is counterintuitive, but it’s the truth.

Love is there to unite you and not to satisfy your personal emotional needs that you can’t manage. As soon as you find yourself thinking that your partner has to constantly express his love for you, then you have a problem.

You must be able to give yourself love and affection without necessarily needing anyone.

If every time you need attention, you start harassing your partner to get him or her to pay attention to you, this time you will have to change your strategy. To do this, take a moment with yourself and list each of your accomplishments, no matter how small, before you get into a relationship. You will see at that moment that the other one is there just to keep you going on the journey of life together and is not a necessary part of your personal fulfillment.

When you have grasped this, there is one last thing you need to understand about it.

Love does not mean “you must always sacrifice yourself”.

In love relationships, it is absolutely normal to sometimes sacrifice your time, needs and desires for your partner. This is essential to maintaining a healthy relationship. Instead of the term “sacrifice,” I’d say it’s more appropriate to sometimes take voluntary initiatives on everyone’s part. This includes having the ability to think outside of oneself and one’s own needs to help care for another person. This brings relationships to life and makes them great.

However, when it comes to sacrificing one’s dignity, self-respect, body, ambitions and purpose in life or completely changing one’s way of life just to be with someone, then that same love becomes problematic. In such situations, you indulge in self-destruction just for the sake of love.

Right now, you will very often hear some people say: “…with all I have done for you, you are not able to give me your attention…” or “I have left so much behind to stay with you and now you are acting like this”.

Unconsciously, the person was sacrificing himself for the other so that the latter would do the same for him. Do you grab my point?

This sacrifice that was supposed to strengthen their relationship by giving them a romantic touch turned into an emotional debt. As a result, they are continuously waiting for each other and then find themselves caught up in a never-ending game of tennis in which everyone has the duty to send the ball to the other side. You can imagine what would happen if one of them failed to send the ball back to the other for x number of reasons. The shit will probably fall on him.

What you need to understand at this point is that sacrifices in love must be fair, punctual and voluntary. When it comes to love, you have no reason to put aside the person you are for the benefit of the other.

Under the influence of emotions, Sarah has skipped over the hard truths you have just discovered about love. She began to think that love would solve most of the problems they would encounter. It didn’t. When she began to see Will’s dark side, she decided to approach her friends to find out how she could sacrifice herself even more.

Would you tolerate a friend ransacking your home while treating you like shit? Would you stay with him in the name of friendship?

The answer is a big NO. This friendship will not go anywhere.

Well, why then bear a burden that is not supposed to be borne since your partner is somehow also your close friend?

In the course of your life, you can fall in love with a wide variety of people. You can fall in love with someone who will do you good, just as you can fall in love with someone who will do you harm. You can fall in love at a young age as well as in adulthood. You can fall in love many times during your life. Love is not unique. Love is not rare.

Your self-confidence, your personality and your self-esteem are. Once you lose them, it would be very difficult to get them back.

Feeling love for someone is one of the best things that could happen to you. It is something that every human being should experience one day.

However, like every experience, you have to know how to control the shuttle so that you don’t get lost out there.

Love is great, but love alone is not enough.