When it comes to love, this generation is filled with people who despise relationships, who are petrified of being vulnerable, and who have a hard time learning to trust someone new after they have been hurt. Whenever anyone says anything negative about love, I jump to defend it. At this point, my defense mechanism has been exercised like a muscle, fully trained to react against anyone who talks poorly about romance, relationships, and fairy tale endings.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been hurt just as deeply as the next person. My heart has been ripped out of my chest, chewed up, and spit out. I’ve experienced grief that’s plunged me deep into the dark depths of brokenness, an abyss I’d never known existed. But I’ve also known what it’s like to feel inspired by silly love songs. I’ve known what it’s like to value someone else’s happiness above my own, to feel unstoppable when you hold someone’s hand, to be fascinated by every single thing about somebody else and never get bored. It’s the love, not the hurt, that I focus on the most. Because you might think love is hopeless, but I’m a hopeless romantic.
There’s such an unfair stigma against hopeless romantics. For my boyfriend and I's first year anniversary, I wrote an article about him and how much our relationship meant to me. Out of all of the positive feedback I received, there was one single negative comment: "Ummmmm she's like 21.....lets be honest here. Lol". Well, it's time I defend myself. Everyone thinks it’s cool to be cynical, to be guarded, and to be aloof. It’s cool to not bother with emotions or to express your opposition to feelings, as if feelings were the worst thing to happen to the human race. On the contrary, everyone belittles hopeless romantics, calling us immature and unrealistic. They say we have yet to experience “reality” because apparently our love lives have just been filled with "rainbows and sunshine." Well, I couldn’t care less about being cool. And to you, negative commenter: just because I didn’t let a nasty heartbreak turn me into a grumpy cynic, doesn’t mean I’m not in touch with reality or I haven’t experienced loss. Yes, I am 21. I am a junior in a competitive business school. If I can fully commit to a career path and taking out loans for it, then I certainly can commit to a relationship. Therefore, please save your negative comments for 16 year old girls who claim their boyfriend is their soulmate after dating them for one month. And on a side note, some of the most self-sufficient and motivated women I know happen to have been in committed relationships in their early twenties.
I’m confident I’m worth loving, even if something in my past has proven me otherwise. That, to me, is way cooler than whatever you’re feeling.
In my opinion, it’s the people who give up after hitting an obstacle who are truly the hopeless ones, especially when it comes to love. If you look to run from commitment or heartbreak, you’ll soon lose sight of what’s even at stake because your escape tactics become habits. Keep in mind: being emotionally hardened and blocking off any romantic prospect requires just as much energy as being open to it (with much less room for gratification).
Us hopeless romantics are true optimists, viewing a glass-half-full, and choose to believe everything happens for a reason. While others might try to protect themselves from potentially getting hurt in relationships, I allow myself to feel with reckless abandon. I know that part of being a human being is embracing every single emotion I have, so I don’t think twice about doing something that might upset me if there’s a chance it’ll also make me happy. I take the good with the bad, the yin with the yang. I welcome any feeling that my heart throws at me. That’s the beauty of being a hopeless romantic: Feelings don’t scare you. They empower you.
