Life is too short to fall for people who don’t love you loudly, or for relationships that don’t set fire to your soul. Our time on this earth is impermanent and in those years we must love fearlessly. The person you’re meant to be with will challenge you, will push you, will drive you crazy. Make you happy and confused and show you what real, complicated love is, all at the same time. The person you’re meant to be with will terrify you because they make you feel something greater than anything else. So this is what you need to know about love – you must always chase the person who scares you. Don’t settle for comfort. Love wildly.
- Unknown
The quote above appeared on Instagram account humanlovers back in August underneath a black and white photo that shows a couple in a passionate embrace, followed by countless similar photos with their own melodramatic captioning. [Who all these couples are and why they’re allowing third parties into their most cherished private moments, we shall never know.]
Humanlovers is not the single Instagram account championing this pattern; there are numerous of them – all equally double-clicked attempts at melodramatic amorous social media poetry. Until very recently (aka when I last checked my feed two hours ago), I’ve been having a love and hate relationship with these accounts. I’ll follow them, then unfollow them, then my best friend will probably forward me one of their posts, I’ll be reminded of the occasional brilliance of some of them, I’ll hesitantly click the follow button once more, then similar accounts will start showing up on my recommendations until I add them all back to my feed; it’s a ruthless, never-ending cycle.
Now, don’t get me all wrong. Yes, I want the crazy, all-consuming love these posts are describing. The one that’s similar to rushing to have that first bite of pizza: you’re perfectly sure that it will burn your tongue, but nothing will stop you from doing so and, after you’ve actually have the first one, you will defy common sense and follow up with the second bite without allowing the pizza to cool off first. At the end of the day, I’ll always be the girl that believes in “lobsters” (if you’re not familiar with the term, please go watch the fourteenth episode of Friends season two and then return to this page to continue reading) and think of Meg Ryan’s “golden age” of rom-coms with special fondness.
However:
- I live in London and I struggle to meet someone that will make me want a second date (or a second round of drinks), let alone someone that sets my soul on fire.
- I’ve tried my hand at the “love fearlessly” notion and it indeed drove me crazy. No one on these quotes talks about this possible turnover though. All assume overwhelming, unconditional, abiding, reciprocated love. News flash, folks: it doesn’t always work out this way.
- Returning to the point about reciprocated love: why do we always need to chase? Why can’t finding love be easy so as to spare us the mental and physical energy for the problems that arise once the relationship status has been established and communicated sufficiently through social media?
- Living in London already assumes that you have opened the door to discomfort already. It might be in the form of micro-managing bosses, petty landlords, loudly-sex-having flatmates, blasé hipster baristas, bikini waxes, two-hour slots at restaurants, rush hour during your daily commute or astronomical council tax fees. In some occasions, an interdisciplinary combination of all of the above. What is so wrong about comfort? As someone who has suppressed a yawn through several awkward dates, I firmly believe that comfort is not given enough credit. It should be considered a widely accepted norm to consider someone your refuge and for you to be their Care Bear that will allow nothing bad to happen to them. [Does this reference show exactly how old I am?]
Furthermore, I profoundly refuse to surrender to the idea of finding someone who will challenge me in an emotional manner. What I – and judging from the extensive anthropological research I’ve undertook in the previous years (yep, that translates as lengthy, heated discussions over drinks) – fellow peers actually seek someone who will challenge them in every other aspect of their life besides this one; someone who will inspire them to be the best versions of themselves professionally, socially, academically, financially, you name it.
To give my over-saturated feed a holiday break from romantic quotations, I’m currently at the phase where I’ve unfollowed all these accounts (ok, most of them) but I’ll keep the following quote for future reference:
Not all girls are made of sugar and everything nice. Some girls are made of sarcasm, wine and everything’s fine.
To realism. To sarcasm. To perhaps adding a bit of cynicism on top. To fewer lovey-dovey ambitions on social media and more real-life confessions, no matter how simplistic they might be.
Romantic (as always),
F.
