Love Is Truly Imperfect: My Favorite Lesson Learnt In Love

Paromita Bardoloi shares her lessons learnt in love. She realizes that love is imperfect. 

Love, the word itself has made poets sing, mystics dance and warriors rage wars. But then, we are still writing and talking about it. That itself talk about the vastness of it.

However, when you are in a romantic relationship, you can be the happiest person or the most bitter. That is the canvas of love relationships. It can take you to places that you never imagined existed. I am yet to meet a human being, who does not have a hope of finding true life once in a life time. Somewhere or the other every human being has a hope that love will heal our broken parts and we look for it everywhere. Have you seen that through all rages and war, we are all looking for someone or something that will heal us deep within, that we will be happy and healthy once again? We are looking for that one whole place where we are safe, heard and loved. That’s in entirety, the history of human civilization.

Now at 30, that I look back to love that I thought was the end of all that ever should be makes me smile. Ofcourse I cried then, but it left me with life lessons. We enter a relationship with the notion of perfection. That’s where it hurts the most. Love taught by the Prophets in the holy books might be perfect, but the ones in our everyday lives are not. No prince comes with a white horse. A normal human being who has the same amount of fear and failure as you do, comes. Accept and deal with it. Don’t make heroes or demi-Gods of another human being. Life will be easier for you. Human beings have feet of clay, don’t create a pedestal. The day it falls, which it invariably will, your heart will break. Great relationships are between two flawed people, not between a God and his/her worshipper.

The next great lesson, I learnt is that your partner is not responsible for your broken parts. He/She might hold you for some time, but to deal with it, is your prerogative. It’s not your partner’s. You alone are responsible for your choices and behaviors. For some time you can point fingers, but nothing changes unless you do. No matter how deeply you are in love, you still remain two separate individual with free will, always.

Also, have you met someone or are you someone who needs to change the person you are in love with, like he/she becomes your project? Congratulation, you are in the perfect mix of a sure disaster. Your relationship should enhance you, if you are in a project of changing someone, you are in a very draining process. You will become bitter sooner or later. You cannot change anyone else, it’s a futile game from day one. It’s a clinched, I know, but the only person, you can change is yourself in a relationship.

The key to a good relationship is mostly forgiveness and acceptance. Being intimate with someone will involve both these two qualities as there will always be flaws to accept and forgive.

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If you always feel unloved and bitter, whether you are single or in a relationship, may be its time you look within yourself and see what is that you are not giving to yourself. And what you don’t give to yourself, neither you can give to someone nor receive with grace. If you are not happy when you are single, chances are less that you will be happy when you are a couple. Learning to be happy is a self mastery, which we all need to learn some day or other. Blaming someone or accepting someone else to make you happy is a recipe to disaster. The problem with our culture is that, we have romanticized love so much that we have hardly talked about love relationships being normal. We don’t talk about how to communicate with our partners. We don’t even talk of partnership in a love relationship. Our movies show us, that a man (who is always larger than life) comes and saves a damsel in distress. But in real life, is anyone actually a damsel in distress or can a man really be a hero, who is less than ordinary. In both ways, we fail the human being in the situation. Nothing in our society teaches us, how to handle intimate relationships, how to say, it’s hurting without being angry or fearful. Schools teach us, Maths and the names of planets, but nothing tells us, how to deal with our own emotions. We often think that we learn it through experience and our experience are mostly based on someone else’s response. The question still remains, is the person from whom we are learning, well equipped to teach us?

I have learnt that love is not the answer to all. Romantic love is not perfect. It comes with its pros and cons.

I have learnt that love is not the answer to all. Romantic love is not perfect. It comes with its pros and cons. It’s beautiful no doubt, but it remains our finest teacher. In all honesty, your partners teach you what you need to know the most. Your partners are what you are within. They are your own learning experience. I have learnt through the hard way that it’s not about the partner it’s about my experience.

We keep repeating what we know, within. We keep repeating our stories. Our partners just remind us, what we actually know from within but conveniently forget. We often say,’ love hurt me each time.’ Love does not hurt. It makes you feel good. The patterns within you hurt. Your partner comes to reveal them. The answer is always to look within.

I have learnt and am learning, that the more comfortable I am with myself, I am comfortable with my partner. The more I respect my boundaries, the more I am respected. The more I realize that nothing is perfect, the easier relationships are.

Love is truly imperfect. It teaches us what we need to learn and become finally the person we are meant to be!

As, I end this piece, I end with what Mystic poet Khalil Gibran talked about love, it still stands true today.

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” 

Cover image via Shutterstock

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