Why Love alone isn’t enough

While I was listening to old love songs on YouTube, I came across the song “Sometimes love just ain’t enough” from Patti Smyth. When I was a teenager I used to hate that song. For me, love was more than enough to make the relationship work and any relationship could withstand any challenges as long as there was love. Since then, I loved someone with every morsel of my soul, with every beat of my heart and more than I ever loved anyone in my life. I tried to hold on and fight for our relationship but despite everything that I’ve done, it will never be enough.

I watched different romantic movies like The Notebook and was hoping for the happy ending like what Allie and Noah had. I had a flicker of hope that maybe someday, our right timing will come and we’ll be back together again. But now I realize, life is not like the movies.

Relationships don’t always have happily ever afters like the fairytales. And sometimes, two people are meant to fall in love but never meant to be together. And the harsh reality is that, sometimes love is not just enough.

Love needs trust. Love should not be the only foundation of any relationships. It should be combined with trust and patience. We all have our lives outside the relationship. We are social animals and we need to connect with others.

What we need is to give our significant others the right space to do what they love to do, let them grow individually, and believe that they won’t break our trust. We need to work on our fears and insecurities as they are the roots of jealousy and stress.

Love should make us better. We enter a relationship not because we want someone to complete us but because we are already contented and happy with ourselves and that someone could complement our lives. We want to improve ourselves because we love our significant others. We want to reach our personal ambitions, career goals, etc, and they support us to reach those dreams. We are not afraid to be ourselves around them because we know that they accept us and they want the best for us. We don’t lose ourselves to the people we love and we don’t lose our love for ourselves.

Love is not worth sacrificing ourselves. It’s okay to make small sacrifices like waiting for him/her to get home safely but what I mean by sacrifices here is compromising our morals or values so that we won’t lose the love of our lives. To be able to earn respect from others, we should respect ourselves. We have to have personal boundaries and not let anyone treat us poorly. There are some things that we can sacrifice but not our ambitions, dignity, and self-respect.
Love does not equate to compatibility. This is the hardest pill to swallow. We can love someone so much and they would also love us in return, but sometimes we all have different wants and needs in life. Sometimes when we love someone, it doesn’t mean that they are our good long-term partners. We could have different goals and values from them too. Like what is usually said, we must use not only our hearts but our minds too.

We could fall in love so many times in our lifetime. We could fall in love with a good or bad person. We could fall in love when we are young or when we are old. Love is not unique. Neither it is scarce. Love is just a small piece of the puzzle, but self-respect, trust, and dignity are the bigger pieces. We could lose love and find it somewhere else but never find ourselves. Life does not equate to love. Love is wonderful. Love is a beautiful feeling. But love alone is never enough.