Don’t Look For A Gentleman, Look For The Guy Who Actually Respects You

It feels lovely to wake up in the morning and have breakfast already cooked for you. It feels great to have a door opened for you. It feels even lovelier to have him pay for your dinner and your dessert that you simply couldn’t pass up. It feels good to have a man in your life that takes care of you and wants to keep you safe.

And I know every girl wants that fairytale. They want the glitter and the glitz. They want the prince charming to come down from the heavens and save them from their evil step sisters.

But that is not love. I’ll say it again, that is not love.

Love isn’t paying the dinner bill. It isn’t saying ‘pardon me’ all the time or buying you expensive dresses. It isn’t showering you with compliments day in and day out. It isn’t having manners. It isn’t politeness. It isn’t material.

Love is messy. It’s real. It’s not this fairytale where everything looks sparkly and airbrushed. Love is fucking work.

You can’t fix everything with a dozen red roses. You can’t fix everything with hand holding and eskimo kisses. You can’t fix an argument with a new watch or Michael Kors handbag. 

Real love is loud and brutal. It is heartbreakingly exhausting. It is arguments and compromise. It’s more arguments and night time fights. It’s getting on each other’s last nerves and needing your own space. It’s learning how to live with someone else when you are used to being alone.

It’s not this fantasy honeymoon that never ends.

Real love is not poetry. It’s not sunshine and daisies that take your blues away. It’s a hard fight. It’s a challenge. It’s honesty and compassion. It is empowerment and encouragement. It’s making mistakes and patching up both of your hearts. It’s more and more work. It is sticking through the hard times together, through all the ugly and the darkness.

I’m not saying love isn’t beautiful. I’m not saying it isn’t wonderful or magic. Love can be incredibly blissful and life changing, but it is not all red roses and pixie dust. It is not a cinderella kind of story. And it is not going to save your life and make you finally love yourself.

Love isn’t supposed to turn into an obsession. It’s not supposed to turn into a unhealthy attachment where you can’t live without this person. It’s not a magnetic pull that you can’t get away from.

Truth be told, the least important part of love are all the gifts and the glamour and the flashy smiles. The least important part of love is when it’s smooth sailing.

What makes love magical is the hard times, not the perfect ones. What makes love real is the arguments that turn to smiles, and the fights that turn into laughter. What makes love beautiful is the journey, not the destination. What makes love incredible is getting though the rough patches, and climbing up that mountaintop together.

So fight and argue and make it work. Don’t just accept the flowers and pretend you’re happy when you’re dying on the inside.