It is said that people fall in love only three times in their lifetime. Each love brings about a new lesson, a new learning opportunity to discover how to love others, how to love oneself and what true love looks like.
The First Love
This is often the young love, the relationship in high school or early college. This is the idealistic love, the relationship one compares to fairy tales and romance movies. The love that is so romanticized that individuals claim this is their one true love and there is no one beyond that. The love that ignores arguments and red flags, because this so-called “love” fits into the onto definition of what we have been told.
This is the love that society claims is love, the love that looks ideal to others. This is the partnership where we believe how others view the relationship is more important than how we feel. This love is more important to be perceived as beautiful than to actually be beneficial to the individuals involved. This relationship teaches about the expectations of love and dispels the fairy tales we grew up idolizing.
The Second Love
This is the hard love. This love is painful, unbalanced and toxic. This love is categorized by the addictive highs and lows of the relationship that make it so difficult to step away. This love is filled with drama, sometimes mental and emotional abuse, that can be so obsessive and conceal the long-term consequences. Individuals hang on to this love because somehow the brain begins to believe that this relationship is different than the first, again starting the idealistic cycle of unhealthy relationships.
This is the love where attempting to salvage what is broken becomes more important than recognizing if it should even be saved. This love teaches about who we are, what we expect out of our partners and how we deserve to be loved. This love teaches lessons that, unfortunately, are accompanied by a lot of pain. This is the love we wished was right but eventually learned was very wrong.
The Third Love
This is the love that lasts. The relationship we never saw coming after the pain endured by the previous situation. This is the love that is so unexpected that it may appear wrong, but everything feels right. This is the relationship where romanticism is effortless, creating a connection that cannot be explained or compared to previous partners. This is a love that comes easy, like something an individual was missing without even recognizing it.
This love is expelled from idealistic expectations and the pressure to adhere to what society claims is love. This is not what love was originally expected to look like and does not align with the preconceived notions of how to love, but it surpasses all expectations. This love is different, it is calm after the storm, and it is peaceful. This love teaches individuals how to love another unconditionally and how to commit ourselves to a person we need.
Each love teaches a different lesson, how to love others, how to love yourself and what love is supposed to look like. These three loves could be spaced throughout a lifetime, or possibly within a few years, everyone understands these lessons at their own pace.
Just because love has not worked out in the past, does not mean it won’t in the future. Stay optimistic and continue to recognize the lessons presented to you, because everyone deserves to find their third love. Tweet us, @VALLEYmag, the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn about love.
