After about 6 years of reading Nicholas Sparks books and wondering when I will get my happily ever after, I've learned that there are 3 types of love you'll experience. Not that you'll only love 3 people, but the way you love them. Your twenties are all about loving those type two loves so that when the third comes around it will be worth every heartbreak.
1. Juvenile love.
The pull-your-hair-on-the-playground love. This is the sweet and innocent love your mom never lets you live down. When you first start to realize who boys are and that you like them. I remember my elementary love; we played house on the playground and sat by each other at lunch. When you're little you don't realize that those boys like you without makeup, without your hair done. Those boys genuinely think you are the cutest girl in pigtails.
2. Your first true love.
This love is the sweep-you-off-your-feet, never-met-anyone-like-him love. The I-want-to-be-with-you-every-second-of-every-day-forever type of love. It's an addiction, you just want that feeling to never go away.
This second love is the hardest love because in your late teens and early twenties we are selfish.
We have had no experience on what it means to love someone and put someone before yourself.
This second love can be toxic. It can be codependent. It can break your heart.
My second love was one of the best feelings I've ever had. I thought I found that fairytale happily ever after, but you don't find that love at twenty usually. My second love was best that could have happened to me my freshman year of college. He supported my dreams, was willing to do long distance, there was nothing wrong.
Second loves, usually don't last.
After a few years, you aren't who you were when you started and neither are they. People changing, they grow, they prosper. Sometimes you don't grow at the same pace or in the same direction.
My second love was exactly what I needed.
3. Your forever love.
Some people do marry their second loves, and they do live a happy life. Some marry their second loves and decide they can't do it anymore.
Some people find that third love, that person that comes into your life when you are least expect it. This love is so easy, so genuine, that it almost doesn't feel like you falling for that person.
Then one you wake up and you couldn't imagine your life without that person, this love can come to you when you are 15, 28, heck you may even find this love when you are 65.
Some people are lucky and find their third love on the first try, for the rest of us you will find that it takes you what feels like forever to find that person. But they are worth finding.
I haven't found that #3 type of love yet.
But I'm determined to.
