By Lorenzo Herbert
To be in love must be a great thing. To see couples holding hands, smiling and kissing warms my heart. But then I start thinking, how many of these people are truly in love? Maybe the girl is very invested, she thinks this guy is everything she’s ever wanted. Maybe he likes her, but deep down he doesn’t love her and can’t see a future with her. But he stays anyway…why? It’s because society forces us to make life decisions so early on.
I never been in a relationship, but I’ve been in love and I know what that feels like. Sweaty hands, heart beats fast, butterflies in the stomach, all of this to me is love. If I don’t feel that when I’m with you, then most likely I don’t really love you – and I probably never will. But people are desperate these days, they will stay with someone who they don’t love out of the fear of being alone.
What irks me most about love is people never want a dose of reality when in a relationship. Once they get into relationship they shut their brains off and open up their hearts. To me, that is very stupid. Someone who is hardworking, dedicated, educated, and in good shape gets my attention. I would never want to be with someone who lets me walk all over them. You see it every day in relationships. I couldn’t even imagine someone that I love treating me like a 2-year-old because if they treat me more like property instead of their boyfriend, that is not love.
In a recent study, 73 percent of women fall in love more than men. Ten percent of people whose marriage ended in an affair end up marrying the person they cheated with. Thirty-five percent of men say they love their partner but are not in love with them. Forty percent of men and women believe in soulmates. In an anonymous survey, 25 percent of men and women said they are only in relationships with their current partner out of religious reasons, or because they accidentally had a child together.
I don’t believe in soulmates. I believe that we fall in love with someone, then after a while, we start to sacrifice and change ourselves to be loved. Maybe that is human nature, or maybe we are just scared of being 90 years old and living in an old folk’s home while time slowly goes by until our last breath.
I had a friend whose boyfriend told her after a month of dating that he loved her. She broke up with him right after that. I don’t think he was in love, I think he was in love with the situation: the dates, movies, dinners, kisses, Netflix and chill, and the atmosphere that new love brings. Some people may not be able to express those emotions so they assume it’s love.
I have this one saying that I’ve used for a long time now: “I love you, but I love ME more.” It’s got me through some rough times in my life. It’s about putting yourself first and following your dreams. It’s about breaking up with that person who isn’t good enough for you. It’s about working hard to get what you want. I know this may make me seem like an evil bastard, but the truth is I would prefer to die alone knowing that the life I lived was 100 percent my own. To me, death isn’t scary, but knowing you are about to die and that you lived your life for others is.