As young adults, many problems are thrust upon us with the assumption that, on most occasions, we’ll be able to make our own informed decisions on the matter. And sure, we get by with a little help from our friends and parents and friend’s parents and older siblings. But there is usually one topic with an astonishing lack of information or rules governing it: love.
“You just know.” Possibly one of the most frustrating phrases to receive as an answer to any question. But especially frustrating when on the tail end of any question regarding the “l-word.” Here begins the long list of unrealistic expectations.
We are expected to know what something feels like without having felt it before. We are expected to know what it feels like to know when there isn’t another person to describe what it’s like “to just know.” Well, what if you’re the type of person to second guess everything? What if you over-think things more frequently than not? What if you think you know, but convince yourself otherwise? What if you’re so sure that you’ll never be sure that you just stop trying? What then?
How can anyone be so sure?
College isn’t exactly love’s playground to begin with. Then throw in drinking and experimenting and parties and attempts at long-distance relationships and hormones. Not to mention all the things that aren’t necessarily college specific – mixed signals and lying and different life choices. Complicated can’t even begin to describe it.
We are expected to find someone who can touch us physically but reach us emotionally. We are expected to find one person and only one person who can make us feel like that. Many people even claim they knew it was love after meeting the person once. Why? Well, you just know, of course.
But you can’t look for love – yet another stipulation. Love will find you when you least expect it, or so they say. How are you expected to find it if no one else is looking? Does it happen in one of those cliché moments where someone holds a door open for you? Or when you drop your pen in class and someone picks it up for you? Chances seem unlikely.
But, according to those who have felt it, love turns the biggest cynics into believers and the most unsure into the most affirmative. I guess you just don’t know until you know.
