Humanity is loving, and there is no doubt showing love the way Valentine’s Day intended is beautiful.
February’s first two weeks are a whirlpool of brilliant reds and pinks, saturated in the smell of candy behind wrapping in isles of goods. Though, it does seem stores start a little earlier on the marketing each year.
The aesthetic is vibrant. It’s cute, capitalizing and bold. It’s love!
But it’s also love that gets misheard, misused, misled.
People want to see and experience the love they recognize from what’s around them, and why shouldn’t they? What’s around people is influence wrapped in cellophane, branded as what you need and what people want.
The media’s influence on love makes it something enchanting, like it was chance and otherworldly influences that brought a pair together – no work needed.
It’s the kind of influence that told people that soulmates are the finale and the happy ending is right around the corner with just about any stranger. Don’t waste time! Or it’s the kind of influence that labels aggression, pain and disrespect the first step right before undying love as long as the other party endures it for long enough.
So, when the world grows up with the media in front of them displaying certain roles and expectations of grandeur, people look for it to translate in their own life.
Real life has a different tune.
Love takes time, and there seems to be an emphasis on finding the one before it’s too late. There’s plenty of movies and shows out there, Like the Netflix series “The Kissing Booth,” of teenagers and young adults experiencing love right then and there. For watchers, suddenly it seems like it has to happen the way we watched it at the age it all happens.
People find out eventually that the period after “The End” is actually a comma and love is hard, rewarding work.
Unfortunately, relationships don’t start at the drop of a book in a high school hallway after crashing into someone. There is time that goes into starting the journey. The “talking stage” as we know it is compressed into 20-ish minutes on screen that really should translate to maybe three months of getting to know someone before bigger decisions are made.
Trust and communication are arguably the foundations of a relationship. Love is not instantaneous. There is no cheat code to immediately unlock the “partner” achievement. Media is borderline lackluster showing the mechanisms of a relationship because it is not easy. It is earned.
There is responsibility, consistency, honesty, words that have actual meanings and genuinely affect a relationship and may be a lot to grapple with, but relationships are a team. And when you love someone, the team isn’t a chore.
Because love in the real world makes the hard work worth every second. Because at the end of every hard day, there is support and devotion to the person you love because of the way they are, their unique traits and the trust you put in them.
That is real, and sometimes real life is scary. Sometimes, people want to resort to an option that is safe, that changes the person in front of them so it soothes a desire inside to find that perfect person that will come without the work.
Growing up is realizing that life is no Disney movie, and loving someone is no longer about the next world-ending event but how to grow with someone and foster a love that is enriched.
