Contrary to popular belief, love does not conquer all. It isn’t always enough too. While it is undoubtedly an important and huge factor, love isn’t always enough for a relationship to work. This applies to all kinds of relationships: romantic, friendships, and with family. I’m no relationship expert, but I do know that it takes more than just love to make a relationship work.
If Love Isn’t Enough, Then What Is?
I believe it takes more than just one aspect to make a huge commitment work. It takes a huge load of patience, effort, understanding, consideration, sacrifice, and respect. Just like most important things in life: school, starting up a business, and the like.
It’s hard to be in a relationship wherein you claim to love each other, but don’t genuinely respect each other. Say for example: during a fight or a misunderstanding, it’s only vital that both parties respect each other, and avoid saying things that would cause lasting damage. Rather than making up for the damage done, it’s always better to prevent having to do it and understand why you have to.
Another example would be to have a partner that would belittle the things that you do, or maybe even degrade you as a person. If we won’t tolerate this from a stranger, why would we tolerate this from our partner – who could be the person that you’re about to spend the rest of your life with?
Does That Mean Love Doesn’t Mean Anything?
Well, of course, it does. For the most part, other aspects are just as important. To further explain, the lack of respect can weigh just as much, or maybe even more. Things like respect go hand in hand with love, and I believe this applies to any type of relationship. More so for romantic relationships.
Even towards people you have no close relations with, it’s important to have respect towards them – even when you don’t necessarily like them. How can a person have a stable and healthy relationship when they can’t manage to respect each other, especially during trying times?
At some point in our lives, we’ve all seen at least one relationship like this. Perhaps maybe even been in one. It’s hard enough to have a partner that would claim that they love you, but would purposely hurt you when things aren’t going so well. Or maybe a partner that doesn’t even exert effort in trying to understand what you have to say.
Understanding each other and understanding each other’s differences is just as important as love itself. Given that these certain traits don’t harm anyone. We all know that it’s unrealistic to be 100% the same with a person’s beliefs, personality, and principles. Even more so with your partner. So it should be always kept in mind that having differences are normal and okay.
Conclusion
Even after going through relationships like these, it still took me a long while to figure out the painfully obvious fact. The fact is that love should always come with respect, patience, and understanding. Anything less than that should not be worth the time, energy, and pain.
I’ve never really believed in the saying that we should love ourselves before getting into a serious relationship. Not until these past two years. I believe that to a certain extent, we do have to have a certain level of love for ourselves. A healthy relationship also requires some level of maturity, confidence, and growth. I would know, as I’ve also had my fair share of immaturity during my previous relationships. It further contributed and fed the negativity that the relationship already had.
It took me a while to realize that the reason I tolerated being treated badly was that I looked down on myself. I didn’t have the confidence to stand up for myself. I didn’t even have enough confidence to realize that I was already being mistreated. With all that said, I can say that for love to be enough, we first have to be enough for ourselves.