hard truths about love
Sarah Biren
Sarah Biren
January 27, 2024 ·  4 min read

6 Hard Truths About Love

While you may have your bed of roses, don’t expect it to be completely thorn-free. We all grew up having this surreal image of love that just seems laughable in adulthood. While it’s important not to encourage the concept of love as a bitter-sweet ride at all times, the truth is also not easy to accept. There are some hard truths about love we need to accept.

The hard truths about love

The movies, books, and fairytales haven’t been anything near accurate. In the real world, love is a whole smorgasbord of emotions and values that have little to do with the unrealistically high expectations our sources fed us. Don’t get me wrong, you can be thrilled and happy when you’re in love. In fact, if you’re not happy, then it’s not love. The only catch is that happiness is not always exclusive of other feelings, and you have to keep this mind.

Here are 6 harsh truths about love that you need to know.

Love alone isn’t enough

You can’t ever hear this enough. Love is the basis, but it’s not solid enough to be the sole driving force of a relationship. If you build a union solely based on the fact that you have feelings for someone and they may feel the same way for you, it’s going to hang by threads. 

Respect, friendship, understanding, compassion, trust, and decency toward one another are some of the important qualities of a strong relationship. You are not really going anywhere if you’re in the long haul with someone who doesn’t respect you. If you can’t trust them, then it’s of no use to try at all. You need all these qualities working together if your relationship is ever going to stand a chance.

Love is not pain

As we are often thought, you can’t truly love someone without a bit of pain. While this is mostly true, we often blow the fact out of proportion. Constant fighting, quarreling, tears, abuse, and emotional torture IS NOT LOVE. These are simply what make an abusive and destructive relationship, the kind you need to get out of as fast as possible. 

Don’t endure heart-wrenching pain in a relationship because “love endures”, “love conquers all”, “you have to fight for what you want”. No, these are misinterpretations. Quarrels occur in relationships and they should get settled. If the problems outweigh the happy times, then it’s simply emotional torture.

You deserve to be happy and if your relationship brings you a lot of pain, it’s not meant for you.

You need to love yourself before you can love someone else

You can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t even remotely pretend to be truly in love with another person if you are not basking in self-love, and a lot of it at that. You need to appreciate yourself and understand that no one is a substitute for you. People who love the best are those who are light at heart and bright on the inside. No matter what you’re going through in life, don’t ever take it out on yourself. It would become impossible to see a reason to love other people. 

You can’t ever force someone to love you

They will always drift away and you will always feel alone. If you ever have to choose between two people to love, go for the second person. You wouldn’t have been torn apart if you truly loved the first. If someone acts like it’s a chore to love, don’t try to force yourself on them.

You can’t use money, sex, care, support, emotional manipulation or any other means to win someone’s love. They have to be willing to give it. If a person is coerced into loving another, it’s only a matter of time before the infatuation wears off and they begin to drift away.

Don’t ever try to force your love on someone else. Let it happen on its own.

It’s not always going to be lovey-dovey

A relationship isn’t always going to as it is depicted in the moves: endless romantic dates, vacations, playing games together, and happily-ever-afters. There will be times when you’re going to be bored out of your mind. You’ll get angry, jealous, lonely, and sometimes, you’ll lash out at each other and say things you don’t really mean.

So don’t expect it to be a flawless ride all through, but this doesn’t mean nasty attitudes are okay. To love someone the right way, you have to be compassionate and sensitive to their feelings.

You don’t have to be broken to deserve love

Is anybody ever really broken? Personally, I don’t think so. People go through pain, trauma that words sometimes may not be able to quantify, but as long as we are alive and able to see the good in something again, we cannot be broken.

You don’t have to expect to be loved only when you have baggage full of pain and hurt. You don’t have to be wounded on the inside (and on the outside) before you can truly experience the thrill of love. You can find true love at your first trial, and you’d be happy without having a string of broken relationships behind you. 

In the end, love is beautiful. It’s an amazing feeling to be attracted to someone on several dimensions, but you need more than love to keep a relationship afloat. Don’t expect it to always be perfect, but you can make it work so well that the happy times would never stop coming.

Keep Reading: Does True Love Exist? 11 Signs You’ve Found The One