12 Brutal Truths About Love That Can Only Be Learned The Hard Way

1. The way you treat people is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Seeing the best in someone makes them want to live up to their best. Distrusting and distancing yourself from someone until they ‘prove themselves worthy’ drives a wedge in between you and encourages them to look elsewhere for love. Seeing the worst in people brings out the worst in them. Seeing the best in them brings out the best.

2. The cure to loneliness is not being loved, it is loving. Nobody is on their way to save you from your own emptiness. The first step to having love in your life is to give it out, as much as you possibly can, as often as you possibly can. You have to invest in love before you can withdraw it.

3. Chasing people who don’t love you properly says more about you than it does about them. When we want confirmation that we’re unlovable, we chase unavailable people. When we’re only comfortable feeling worthless, we stay with people who don’t consider our needs. The love that we have in our lives is always a reflection of how we feel about ourselves.

4. Love can’t fix the things that are broken inside of you, but it can show you those things. Love won’t heal your broken heart. It won’t solve your self-esteem issues. It won’t make you into a trusting person if you’re inherently suspicious. But it will highlight all the places in which you still have some growing to do. It will show you the worst in yourself, and give you the opportunity to start making healthier choices.

5. The surest way to amplify, pronounce and stay indefinitely trapped inside your love for someone is to hate them. Hatred is just the love that you’re denying yourself, projected onto somebody else. You tell yourself you’re unworthy of love until this other person gives it to you in a highly specific way, and you therefore keep your self-worth wrapped up in that person indefinitely (instead of taking it upon yourself to learn to love yourself in the ways you wish they would).

6. You’re always about as loved as you let yourself be. People who believe themselves to be worthy of love are open to giving and receiving it. People who believe they aren’t worthy of love chase unavailable people, subconsciously sabotage their relationships and find excuses to end things before they ever properly begin. We are always exactly as loved as we feel comfortable being.

7. Someone can love you immensely and still be wrong, or even toxic, to you. Sometimes your needs just don’t line up with someone else’s and the love they want to give you is actually the exact kind of love that would hold you back. That doesn’t mean their love is absent. It just means you’re better off apart from one another.

8. You can love someone immensely and still be wrong, or even toxic, for them. Sometimes someone else’s needs just don’t line up with yours and the love you want to give them is the exact kind of love that would hold them back. That doesn’t mean you aren’t loving them properly. It just means that you’re better off apart from one another.

9. The person you love the most is not necessarily the person you’re most compatible with, or the person you’re meant to spend your life with. Loving someone doesn’t mean you have all the same needs or long-term goals or core values. You can love someone so much it feels like it’s going to kill you and still not be compatible with them long-term. This is likely to be one of the saddest lessons you’ll ever learn.

10. The love that is right for you isn’t going to look the way you thought it would. We’re often highly aware of what our ego wants, but wildly unaware of what we actually need in order to be happy. If you’re only chasing love that looks a very certain way, you’re likely to miss out on the love that might actually grow you immeasurably.

11. Sometimes the biggest, greatest, most magnanimous thing you can do for someone you love is to let them go. Sometimes you just can’t give someone what they need to be happy. Sometimes the only way to love someone selflessly is from a distance.

12. Love doesn’t conquer, or even withstand, everything. Love can die. But the really resilient stuff always comes back to life – just in a different form. And if you’re open to letting love change, that’s the best shot you have at never losing it.

Get your copy of Heidi Priebe’s debut poetry collection “The First New Universe” here.