When you think of love what first pops into your mind? Is it hearts, the color pink and things that belong in the Valentines Day section at your local Walmart? Or is it a person, one that you have in your life currently or did in the past? The question of what is love seems so simple at first. The culture of love is all around us, with apps like Tinder and Bumble and tv shows that run the gamut of the Bachelor Franchise to Married at First Sight.
With all the content promoting the creation of love and finding it, you would think that everyone would be in a relationship. But they're not, and a lot of people don't want to be. It is obvious that the media and social culture we have created around relationships is entirely inaccurate. There is an attitude that is becoming more common in our generation and honestly, I'm scared. I'll call it cut-off culture.
Go on twitter any day of the week and without a doubt, there will be a viral tweet going around about an argument between a couple, that probably shouldn't have been posted in the first place. One part of the couple will be asking their audience for an opinion on what they should do or not do, eliciting thousands of opinions. These will be all over the place but by far the most common response I see now is " Throw the whole man/girl away! You don't need that in your life!"
While there are situations that you should definitely walk away from in a relationship, when they are abusive or serious, I believe that most problems are fixable. In my opinion, people our age have developed an attitude of where if something is not serving you at all times it isn't the thing to do. That is by no means to say that you shouldn't find some who makes you a priority, but you can't be the only priority.
Here are two truths and they might be hard to hear; it isn't all about you, and love isn't fair or easy. Love is struggle, love is pain, and love will piss you off more than anything else. The attitude of it's not working so leave it and find something new is incredibly damaging to our culture. If you ask people who have been married a long time how they did it you will most likely get a common response. That response will be "It was not easy, but we worked through it."
My parents have been together since they were fifteen years old and are now working on about 27 years together. One of the biggest pieces of relationship they have told me is that "Love is compromising and that compromise won't always be 50/50. In fact, most of the time, it won't be. A lot of the time it might be 70/30. But that's ok because the next time it will switch and you hold onto that. You choose to love the person more than the thing that is causing problems."
When I talked to my grandparents, their advice was equally great. They said, "When we grew up and something broke, we fixed it. We didn't buy a new one." Now I'm pretty sure they got that off a motivational poster, but it still holds true. Love takes work and it won't be easy. But the thing to remember is while you might not always like them, you will always love them.
Sheetal Tadiparty
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