It's only six words, twenty-one letters, but when I first heard the phrase spoken in a video from one of my favorite Youtubers I had to stop and rewind. This simple saying made me pause. It made me think. It made me reflect.

Loving is such a natural thing to do. It's a human thing to do. And as humans, we crave it. To love and be loved. It's a special feeling, one that once you get a taste of you never want to let go.

But it's not enough.

I'm here to tell you that loving for the sake of loving? It's not enough.

You don't need to be in a relationship just to say you have one. You don't need to stay in a relationship just because it feels like all you know.

I'm here to tell you that it's okay to be alone. You can survive. You can still stand on two feet. You can still be you. In fact, you might even be a better you because of it.

Because no one should love just to be loved. We need to love – and be loved – for the right reasons. We don't need to be in relationships that aren't what we truly deserve. We don't need to settle.

It's okay if you haven't found your person. So many times we jump into relationships because we want to feel loved. We want to have the title of calling someone our significant other. We want someone who will text us cute things, or tell us we're pretty, buy us flowers or kiss us goodnight. We watch movies with happy endings, with Mr. Right, with "the one." We want it to happen to us. But we are young. We are still so young. Many of us haven't found our person yet. And guess what? That's okay. In fact, it's better than okay.

Here's why:

I've learned more about myself in a semester at college than in eighteen years of life. I'm growing, I'm changing – always. And you know what? So is everyone else. Now if you've found someone who you can grow and change with, that's great. But you need to be a complete person first. If you don't know what you stand for, if you don't love yourself first, then you risk the chance of losing yourself completely in a relationship. You're risking your identity just to feel loved.

Be with someone who sets your heart on fire, who betters you as a person. Be with someone who challenges you as an individual and makes you want to be the best version of yourself. Don't be with someone just to feel safe, just to have someone to call your own. That is not real love. That is loving just to be loved.

Love isn't begging someone to love you back, or trying to force them into treating you how you deserve. Staying in a relationship where you are the only one invested in it is loving so that you receive love back. But is it worth it if your partner isn't meeting you halfway?

I understand this realization is a hard one to come to, but I want everyone to take a second and think about this. Why would you want someone in your life who isn't fighting to keep you? Who doesn't realize the amazing human being you are? Who you are just loving, in order to feel loved back.

If someone wants to be with you, then they will find a way. Literally nothing can keep a couple who is meant to be together apart, and I am a firm believer in this. If both people want something bad enough, if they're willing to fight for it, if they don't give up – that's what true love is. That is loving not just to be loved back.

True love is someone who fights for you. Someone who chooses you every day because a world without you is too tragic to bear. So if someone isn't putting in the effort to be in your life, then show them the door. As hard as that might be, you deserve something better. Because in the process of loving someone just to be loved back, you lose yourself. And nothing is worse than losing who you are for someone who didn't cherish who you were.

You've heard the story: graduate high school, go to college, get a job, get a house, get married, have kids. But guess what? Not everybody gets that, not everyone gets it in that order. Because there's this thing called life, and life happens. We are told we have to find love and then the rest of our lives can start. But is it really love, if we just want to be loved back?

If you're questioning your relationship, I want you to think about your future kid, or if you don't think you'll be having kids, think about yourself when you were younger. Would the little girl, the one who had all of these fairytales and fantasies, who had yet not known love, not known heartbreak, want this for you? She would want real love. She can't even fathom the thought of loving just to be loved back.

I think a lot of times people stay in relationships for this exact reason. People love just to be loved back because they're scared: scared to be alone, scared they won't find someone who will love them again. But just think:

I know we live in a world full of #relationshipgoals and #cutecouples and if we're not in one, it makes us wonder. What is wrong with me? Why am I not good enough?

But you are. You are good enough.

You don't need someone else to make you complete. You don't need someone else to validate your existence, your intelligence, your beauty. You don't need to love just to be loved back. When you are your true self, love will find you. The good kind of love will find you.

There are no excuses when it comes to true love, the right love. When we are truly in love, we don't just love to be loved back. We love because that person brings out the best in us, we love because we have found our person. The person who will be there for us no matter what, and chooses us day after day.

So don't settle, be patient, and

Your great love is out there. And you might not find that someone today, or next year, or in the next ten years. It takes the right timing, and it takes luck. And if you're lucky enough to find someone who loves you back? Someone who truly and madly loves you back? Someone who loves you because of every wonderful part of your beautiful mind and every fleeting thought that has ever crossed it? Someone who loves you from every crevice of your soul to every vein that courses through your body? Someone who loves you for the right reasons? Well –

There will be no question. You won't have to force it. And you will know you have found real love. The kind of love where you are not just loving to be loved back.