"Love hurts." I hear this statement all the time and quite frankly, I'm fed up with the people who say this. This is just an excuse for people to ignore their issues and stay in the wrong relationship. Saying "love hurts" is like telling yourself that it's just a bump in the road instead of a major warning sign asking you to take the next exit. It's pretending that you've found what you want, but in reality, you might have missed the mark.

Love should never hurt you.

Love is the one thing in this world that should never hurt y

ou. Loneliness can hurt you. Anger can hurt you. Hatred can hurt you but love never should. If you feel like love is hurting you, you don't have love. You have something that seems a lot like love, but in reality, it's something else. Someone is pretending they love you without actually loving you. Someone thinks they love you, but they really only care about themselves. Real love never hurts.

I get asked all the time how I've managed to stay with someone for 7+ years through high school and college. The truth is that love can be hard. It requires a lot of work and a lot of compromising. But it never requires you to hurt. Being hurt and being upset are two very different things. Being upset over a moment of discomfort or a disagreement is perfectly okay. That moment will pass if you know love. Love is forgiving and love is healing. Being hurt, on the other hand, is something much deeper. It's real pain that tugs and pulls at your mentality. Hurt is lying about who you are and feeling trapped with someone you don't actually like. Hurt is ignoring problems that bother you just to make someone else feel more comfortable while your agony grows. Hurt is not something that can exist with love.

There's a fine line between making it work and ignoring the problem. Ignoring the problem in a relationship isn't fighting for love. It's fighting for each other's comfort and pride. It might seem like you're making it work, but you're really just making it worse. This leads to meltdowns, unhappiness, and pain. Making it work on the other hand is figuring out how to make each other happy. It's loving someone enough to make little sacrifices and feel good about them because it's all worth it to fix the problem.

Love should always be healing. It should rebuild you and protect you from hurt. Love allows you to express yourself freely and to communicate your thoughts. It never feels like a burden. It's always worth fighting for.

We need to stop telling ourselves that love hurts because it's just not true. It's time we admit that we might be wrong. We need to stop making love look like something else and appreciate the real thing because real love is unlike anything else and real love doesn't hurt.