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Over the years, I had many people ponder what their dead relationships were really like, what went wrong in them, what could’ve saved them, and what it would take to resurrect one.
Some of these people found nothing of use or particularly interesting during their reflection. Others went on to unearth a string of riveting discoveries, some of them even life-changing.
I’m a former recruit of the latter camp. And my most significant discoveries were mainly tied to love. It turned out I never knew how to do it the right way, and I had some pretty toxic beliefs around it that kept messing up my relationships for years.
Below are four of my biggest discoveries. Hopefully, they’ll deepen your understanding of love, and help you avoid some typical relationship pitfalls that I couldn’t — be that after you get back with your ex or when you find someone new.
1. Love Comes In Stages
Helen Fisher, one of the worlds leading researchers on attraction, discovered that romantic love is a universal experience. It’s embedded in everyone, regardless of culture, biology, and upbringing, and it comes in three stages: lust, romantic love, and attachment.
1. Lust. Think back on all the times you’ve seen a hot girl or guy walk by who instantly turned you on. That was pure lust. It’s our sex drive. It’s the answer to questions like, “do I want to fuck that person or not?” Anyone who meets our minimal psychical standards is subjected to our lust when we encounter them. And the overall stage lasts anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks.
2. Romantic love. An average person will stay in this stage from three weeks to one year. During it, they’ll likely be obsessed with their love interest, even possessive and controlling. They’ll overlook their flaws and exaggerate their positive features. Sometimes they’ll even lose appetite, see their productivity get hampered, or become unable to sleep due to their immense love.
3. Attachment. The make-it-or-break-it point for the majority of relationships. This stage only unfolds entirely if a couple is compatible. It’s essentially a sense of calm and security that blankets their union and makes them solidify their “couple identity.” The requirement for attachment to last is that both people in the relationship keep accumulating new meaningful experiences and continue growing in the same direction.
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Learn More Here2. Love Has Two Types
The first type is conditional love. That is, love with conditions — a purely transactional form of it. It means you love someone not for the person but for some external benefit or pleasure they bring to the table. And as soon as they don’t provide that benefit or pleasure anymore, you cease to love them.
It’s when you think, “I’ll only keep loving you if you keep your six-pack abs, continue paying our rent, stay with your current employer, keep complimenting me and being affectionate in the way I like, or keep making me look good in front of my friends.”
The second type is unconditional love. That is, love devoid of conditions — a purely altruistic form of it. It means you love someone for who they are and not for some external benefit or pleasure they bring to the table.
It’s the kind of love that says, “I’ll love you even if you gain 5 pounds, cut your hair short, move countries, don’t always agree with me, or form a piss-poor relationship with my mom.”
Normally, conditional love is toxic, while unconditional is healthy. But there is a subtle distinction flowing in the backdrop of this theory that needs to be addressed.
This distinction being that while love (as in, the emotion) should stay unconditional, the way you approach and operate your relationship should remain conditional.
Because there are always certain things you shouldn’t tolerate on a relationship level: your partner cheating, crossing your boundaries, disrespecting you, not taking responsibility for their emotions or actions, or gutting newborns and sacrificing them to Satan.
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Lots of people think love is so fucking easy, but it’s not. Love is dangerous and unpredictable. And there are certainly enough pieces of evidence to prove that.
If you want real love, you’ve got to let go of your unrealistic expectations about it, and the happy-ever-after outcomes you wish it would realize. Because there is a good chance it won’t realize them, and you’ll only end up disappointed.
We all want the perfect Disney relationship, but outside the big screen, that’s impossible.
This same danger and unpredictability are what deters many people from giving love a shot. They’re too afraid to put themselves on the line, to be vulnerable, to unflinchingly look rejection in the eyes, and risk having their heart pulverized by it.
Instead, people opt for cultivating shallow relationships or no relationships at all. They keep playing it safe, lurking on the sidelines, hiding in the shadow of the incredible person they could’ve been. And then they wonder why they’re so miserable.
Here’s the harsh truth: the willingness to get your heart broken is the prerequisite for falling in love for real.
So if you want to experience what true love feels like, you’ve got to risk getting your heart broken. You’ve got to act despite your fear, let go of how you think love should be, your preferences, and your illusion of control.
You’ve got to step off the sidelines and participate in the daring adventure — or stay stuck in an incessant grey miasma of unrealized desires and regret.
4. Love Doesn’t Equal Compatibility
Just because someone loves you and you love them doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good fit for each other long-term. Compatibility and love are radically different processes that don’t always manifest or go well together.
Once upon a time, I loved a shallow and trashy low-life, and she loved me. She was an epitome of a goalless, meandering free-spirit — a true hedonist in every sense of the word.
In the mornings, you could catch her in one of our local bars gulping down spirits. In the evenings and nights, you could see her partying with a group of other lost souls. But me? I was (and still am) an antisocial nerd who mostly stayed in his office and kept growing this blog — someone who, on his best days, drank no more than half a bottle of beer.
I had a blast with this chick. She helped me express my wild, irreverent side; I helped her express her intellectual, responsible one. But were we compatible with each other? Hell no! And no amount of love between us could ever bridge that gap. Our goals were misaligned, our values clashed, and our lifestyles were radically different. There was no hope for a happy and healthy romantic relationship to ever blossom between us.
The lesson: when getting into a relationship, do follow your emotions but don’t forget to use your head too. Primarily to double-check if your emotions are leading you astray — because they usually are.
Ultimately, you can find someone that makes you feel like you’re on cloud-9. Still, they need to be compatible in other logical, colder ways (i.e., in their values, beliefs, ambitions, goals, lifestyle, etc.) for your relationship to work long-term.
5. Love Is Never Enough
Love is beautiful, nourishing, useful, even necessary. But holy fuck is it overrated. What I mean by this is that too many people consider it their god value. They prioritize it over everything else in their relationship. This is a recipe for disaster.
For instance, when I was with one of my earlier exes, I was always the one doing everything in the relationship. I traveled to her since we were long-distance, helped clean up around her house, cared for her annoying siblings, prepped meals for everyone, bought everything she asked me for, etc.
She could easily return the favors, of course, but I never asked her to. I simply kept pleasing, day in and day out. I couldn’t stop — I didn’t want to. I loved her too much.
And due to the overemphasis on love, my hobbies and interests fell by the waist-side, studies and work suffered, friends walked out of my life, and soon, my relationship became my everything. I marginalized myself and massacred my identity for it.
It wasn’t long after my ex noticed I stopped having a life — I quit being myself. As a result, she ceased to respect and trust me. Soon, even her affection went down the drain. Then one thing led to another, resentment and conflicts kept piling up, and suddenly, she pulled the plug. And my mind went black.
These are the sorts of outcomes prioritizing love over everything else brings. It makes you stay in a mediocre or dysfunctional relationship. It makes you keep enabling a cheater to cheat on you. It makes you a sad and miserable person.
The way you avoid these crappy outcomes is by putting healthier values on top of love — values like trust, respect, honesty, humility, good communication, and individuality.
Love won’t solve all of your relationship problems, and it’s never worth sacrificing for. Love, by itself, just isn’t enough to sustain a healthy relationship. Love is never enough.
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