We once discussed how “I love you” can take several forms, often not even including those actual words. Here it is if you wanna reread it. So while that particular post was more about how you can tell whether or not somebody loves you, this one’s going to tackle the other side of it: how not to lose that fuzzy feeling we call love.
We were (mostly) taught that love is a feeling of butterflies and rainbows and candy-colored clouds and whatnot. I mean, sure. That might spark love. But that’s not enough to live on. After the infatuation phase comes the part where you decide on whether or not to stay with this person, correct? And if you choose this person (and they choose you), at some point your fuzzy feelings will fade.
The sad part
So here’s the depressing part. Nine times out of ten, the thing that made you fall for this person in the first place will most likely also be the thing that will start to annoy you. You might even begin to resent it. Their playfulness will become immaturity and you’re tired of being the parent. Their close family ties begin to suffocate you and you feel like you’re always losing to their mom. You put them on a pedestal, but you soon realized they’re only human and they fell right off and are now ~a flawed individual~. You get the idea, right? So what happens next?
Here’s what you (can) do about it
This is the part where love being a verb kicks in. In order to stay in love, you have to actually choose to be. You have to work at rediscovering and newly appreciating all the little things that made you fall for this person in the first place. There are some things that I’ve seen successful couples around me do (and less successful couples did not do):
- Keep flirting. Always. I’ve seen it happen where longterm relationships start to get a little stale and the individuals in this relationship started looking for attention elsewhere. In and of itself harmless, if it remains just flirting. If you’re cool with that. At some point someone’s probably gonna take it too far. On the other end of the spectrum I’ve seen couples who are still so giddy and cute with each other that they won’t even notice anyone else. There’s an expression for that in Egypt: they fill each others’ eyes, meaning they don’t see anyone but the person they love. D’aww. That’s longterm #goals tho.
- When dealing with conflict, the most successful approach I’ve seen was more of an attitude than anything else. When in an argument, it wasn’t him vs her. It’s them vs the problem. It’s a mindset that you have to work on I guess, but I loved it.
- I met a married couple that renewed their vows each year. Instead of recreating a mini-wedding though, they went away for a couple of days, sans kids, and reevaluated the past year; are they both holding up their end of the bargain? Are they happy with the way they treat each other and deal with problems? Do they feel supported? The way this couple talked about it was beautiful and inspiring and ngl it restored my faith in romance a little bit.
These are just some examples of how you can keep it fresh and actively choose to keep falling and being in love with your person of choice. Any other examples are welcome of course, so if you’d like please share them in the comments. This is the type of stuff we could use more of, ain’t it? And this is all I got.
