When it comes to love, you could say that I'm a romantic cynic. I can fantasize elaborate “rom-com” scenarios with the best of them, plan out how I want to be proposed to and wish to have the adorable Instagram worthy relationship... but at the same time, I could honestly do without. I don't expect those kind of things in my life, and would even go as far as saying that I don't want them in my life. My reasons are simple. I've seen too many relationships tear the heart out of beautiful but unlucky individuals. I've had to stand by as my dad, who I think deserves the most love in the world, be left alone due to divorce-- twice. My mom, when answering my question about love for this article, admitted that she's not the best source, since she is on her fourth husband.
I have every reason to want to be perpetually single, yet here I am, in a relationship. I am in love with my boyfriend, though at first I didn't want to be. We dated before, and I expected everything to fizzle out quickly. I considered myself “too jaded” to be in love. (Imagine my surprise when I realized that my boyfriend has survived a little more than a year at my side... and still wants to date me.) The process of falling in love is hard for a lot of us, and I think I can guess why.
You see, falling in love is hard to do when you expect the fall to kill you. The fall can happen at any time because of their laugh, an act of kindness, a kiss. It makes the whole process that much more terrifying. It only takes one moment to realize that your infatuation is a lot more serious than you thought, that you could be in over your head and you don't know if you should stop it all or keep going. In that moment, you sign off on loving all of them: their quirks, their obsessions, their memories, their body.
Falling in love is hard to do if you also expect your first love to be your only love. I personally blame Disney for that. As kids, we never see Snow White cycle through a couple relationships. We never see Cinderella break up with the prince so that she can find herself. I don't remember there being a princess wondering if she's really in love or if she really is just thinks that the prince is cute. We expect these grand romances and doubt our own relationships when we don't get swept into the “happily ever after” we so expect.
Yes, falling in love is hard to do with movie expectations, especially when you hope to get back together again. Romantic comedies may be to blame for that. Yes, they tend to be more realistic than Disney, but despite all the tears and fights we see, there is still a happy ending. The heroine reunites with her love, despite breaking up twenty minutes before the movie's end. In real life though, you can't ever know how it'll end for sure. You may find yourself happily reunited, or you may carry around the bitter ache of “what could have been/what never was” for a while.
Not knowing isn't even the hardest part of what makes falling in love so hard. In my eyes, falling in love is so hard to do mostly because we can't control it. Love in real time is hard to pin down. You can't script it, no matter how hard you try. For me personally, that is my biggest hang up with love. I need to plan everything, but my parents kind of screwed me over in the whole love department. I get my ability to fall in love from them. Since my dad falls hard and my mom falls fast, I didn't stand a chance. So many unrequited crushes. So many awkward moments. All because I couldn't stop falling in love.
But even I have to admit that falling in love is only hard because it is worth it. The difficulties of it all is to ensure that you want it bad enough and in that sense, I'm grateful. Though I still have moments of doubt, I know that I only started my life when I realized that I was really and truly in love. In this generation, we are afraid to love because “what if?” We don't want to lose, but I've found that there is only experience to gain.
Falling in love taught me to think. It taught me to consider the needs of others and what I needed to be happy. Falling in love is wonderful because there is someone there to pick you up at the bottom, and see you, piece by piece. No number of Disney movies or romantic comedies can do it justice and I can say that it's so much sweeter to be in love because of that. Take it from this romantic cynic: let go of your expectations, and take the plunge, no matter how hard.
