I love reading articles about relationships, delving into info about romantic relationships is definitely the juiciest. Some time ago I read about the concept of the Three Loves we have in our lives and I like it, it certainly rings true for me – as in it’s the story of my love life! How does it fit with your romantic history?
The idea is the first love is a young love (I don’t think each of the three loves are connected to only one person, although that may be the case for you) ‘This is the naive kind of love, the impractical, movie-esque type of love.‘ Nadia Makorova describes this kind of love as the one you see plastered all over social media, gushing about each other, wanting the relationship to appear magical and perfect to the outside world.
The second of kind of love is the hard love (who can relate?!?!). This is the love that teaches us the hard lessons that our souls have come to learn in this lifetime – and it hurts like hell! This love often involves emotional manipulation…’The second love is usually unbalanced and unhealthy and can be selfish and narcissistic. Due to these facts, there is almost always drama, and you become trained to think that it is your fault.‘
Can I get an ‘AMEN SISTA’ from all of you who can relate to this? Oh my, oh yes, 100%. And there’s more…’Yet, instead of giving up on the relationship, you hang on, thinking that one day suddenly everything will change and they will realise how desperately they love you. This emotional swing of extreme highs and lows is exactly what keeps us addicted to this kind of unhealthy relationship. We push through the lows, no matter how bad they are, to get a slight tingling feeling from those wonderful highs.’ I lived in this painful, wonderful, crazy second kind of love for years – this can be the long terms lovers, the husbands, the fathers of your children – it can get messy as all hell – but the lessons you need to learn about yourself will be burnt into you from the flames of this extreme type of love. It’s here that we learn what we need in relationship, and often in life. What we want from a partner, and what is unacceptable.
The third love is one we never expected and still can’t really believe is happening, is working and is so happy! Often this love is with a kind of person you have not dated before and it works surprisingly well, it just doesn’t end, there are no big issues, it’s easy and it mostly feels good – crazy right?!?! ‘Sometimes, you’re not happy. Sometimes, they are not happy. But that doesn’t mean that it is the end of the relationship. You come together with your unhappiness and try to solve it.’ And you do what it takes to resolve it. ‘Because that’s what love is, it’s making things work because you love one another and want to be together.’
This is the love I am in now and it is so different from the first and second, there is peace, there is space, there are grounded choices and there is grown up respect. It doesn’t have the magical thinking of the first, it doesn’t have the huge adrenaline rushes of the second, but it does have the consistency, care and tenderness that is required to build and nurture a beautiful, nourishing, awesome life.
I would like to add that just because someone was a first or second kind of love for you, that doesn’t in anyway take away from how you felt or feel about them. You may well love them deeply and cherish many things about them – which is wonderful! I think this framework helps us understand the purpose of the relationships we go through, and to show us where we might be on the journey. I also think you can have many second types of love, and perhaps some of us never get past the second, or even first type by reliving the same type again and again with different people.
Which of these kinds of love have you experienced, and what did you learn?
Image credit: https://www.southernliving.comQuoted text: https://swoon.theodysseyonline.com/too-immature-for-marriage