In 1967, John Lennon wrote a song called, "All Yous Need Is Love." He also beat out both of his wives, abased i of his children, verbally driveling his gay Jewish manager with homophobic and anti-semitic slurs, and in one case had a camera crew flick him lying naked in his bed for an entire day.

Thirty-five years later, Trent Reznor from Ix Inch Nails wrote a song called "Love Is Not Enough." Reznor, despite being famous for his shocking stage performances and his grotesque and disturbing videos, got clean from all drugs and alcohol, married ane woman, had two children with her, and and then canceled entire albums and tours so that he could stay home and be a skillful husband and father.

Ane of these two men had a articulate and realistic agreement of love. 1 of them did not. One of these men idealized dearest as the solution to all of his problems. One of them did not. One of these men was probably a narcissistic asshole. Ane of them was not.

In our civilization, many of us idealize dear. We meet it as some lofty cure-all for all of life's issues. Our movies and our stories and our history all celebrate it as life'due south ultimate goal, the final solution for all of our hurting and struggle. And because we idealize love, we overestimate it. As a result, our relationships pay a price.

When we believe that "all we need is love," and then like Lennon, we're more likely to ignore fundamental values such as respect, humility, and delivery towards the people we care about. After all, if dear solves everything, then why bother with all the other stuff—all of the hard stuff?

But if, similar Reznor, we believe that "love is not plenty," so we understand that good for you relationships require more than pure emotion or lofty passions. Nosotros sympathize that there are things more important in our lives and our relationships than simply being in love. And the success of our relationships hinges on these deeper and more than of import values.

The trouble with idealizing love is that information technology causes us to develop unrealistic expectations about what love really is and what it can do for us. These unrealistic expectations so sabotage the very relationships we concord dear in the first place.

Allow me to illustrate:

1. Dearest Does Non Equal Compatibility

Just considering you fall in dear with someone doesn't necessarily mean they're a practiced partner for you to exist with over the long term. Love is an emotional process. Compatibility is a logical process. And the two don't bleed into 1 another very well.

It's possible to fall in love with somebody who doesn't treat us well, who makes us experience worse virtually ourselves, who doesn't hold the same respect for us as nosotros do for them, or who has such a dysfunctional life themselves that they threaten to bring the states down with them.

Abstract painting love is not enough

It's possible to fall in dearest with somebody who has unlike ambitions or life goals that are contradictory to our own, who holds dissimilar philosophical beliefs or worldviews that clash with our own sense of reality.

It'south possible to fall in dearest with somebody who sucks for us and our happiness.

That may audio paradoxical, but it's true.

When I call back of all of the disastrous relationships I've seen or people have emailed me about, many (or well-nigh) of them were entered into on the basis of emotion—they felt that "spark" and then they just dove in head start. Forget that he was a built-in-again Christian alcoholic and she was an acrid-dropping bisexual necrophiliac. It merely felt right.

And and then six months later, when she's throwing his shit out onto the backyard and he's praying to Jesus twelve times a day for her salvation, they expect around and wonder, "Gee, where did information technology become wrong?"

The truth is, it went wrong before it even began.

When dating and looking for a partner, yous must use not simply your heart, simply your mind. Yes, you lot want to find someone who makes your center flutter and your farts odour similar reddish popsicles. But you also need to evaluate a person's values, how they care for themselves, how they treat those shut to them, their ambitions, and their worldviews in general.

Considering if y'all fall in love with someone who is incompatible with you… well, as the ski instructor from S Park once said, y'all're going to have a bad time.

2. Love Does Non Solve Your Human relationship Problems

My first girlfriend and I were madly in love with each other. We also lived in different cities, had no money to meet each other, had families who hated each other, and went through weekly bouts of meaningless drama and fighting.

Man and woman kissing love is not enough

And every time we fought, we'd come back to each other the next twenty-four hour period and make up and remind each other how crazy we were well-nigh i some other and that none of those little things matter because we're omg sooooooo in love and we'll find a fashion to work it out and everything will be great, merely you wait and see. Our beloved made us feel similar nosotros were overcoming our bug, when on a practical level, absolutely zip had inverse.

As you can imagine, none of our bug got resolved. The fights repeated themselves. The arguments got worse. Our inability to ever see each other hung effectually our necks like an albatross. We were both self-captivated to the indicate where nosotros couldn't fifty-fifty communicate that effectively. Hours and hours talking on the telephone with nada actually said. Looking back, there was no hope that information technology was going to last. Yet we kept information technology up for three fucking years!

After all, love conquers all, correct?

Unsurprisingly, that relationship burst into flames and crashed like the Hindenburg into an oil patch. The break upwardly was ugly. And the big lesson I took abroad from it was this:

This is how a toxic relationship works. The roller coaster of emotions is exhilarant, each high feeling even more important and more than valid than the one earlier, but unless there'due south a stable and applied foundation beneath your feet, that ascent tide of emotion will somewhen come up and wash it all away.

3. Love Is Not Always Worth Sacrificing Yourself For

One of the defining characteristics of loving someone is that you are able to call up exterior of yourself and your own needs to help care for another person and their needs as well.

Just the question that doesn't get asked often enough is exactly what are yous sacrificing, and is it worth information technology?

Sad girl realizing that love is not enough

In loving relationships, it'due south normal for both people to occasionally sacrifice their own desires, their ain needs, and their ain time for one another. I would debate that this is normal and salubrious and a big part of what makes a human relationship so slap-up.

But when it comes to sacrificing one's self-respect, one'south nobility, one'southward physical trunk, ane's ambitions and life purpose, just to exist with someone, then that same love becomes problematic. A loving relationship is supposed to supplement our individual identity, not impairment information technology or replace it.

If nosotros detect ourselves in situations where we're tolerating disrespectful or abusive beliefs, then that's essentially what nosotros're doing: we're allowing our love to swallow us and negate the states, and if we're non careful, information technology will exit united states a shell of the person we one time were.

In fact, this is the paradoxical conclusion I come to in my Salubrious Relationships Form in The Subtle Art School—that sometimes the best outcome for a relationship is for it to end. Some things are not worth sacrificing for. Some things just cannot be stock-still.

One of the oldest pieces of human relationship communication in the volume is, "You and your partner should be all-time friends." Most people look at that slice of advice in the positive: I should spend fourth dimension with my partner similar I do with my all-time friend, I should communicate openly with my partner like I do with my best friend, I should have fun with my partner like I do with my best friend.

Just people should also look at information technology in the negative:

Amazingly, when we ask ourselves this question honestly, in most unhealthy and codependent relationships, the answer is "no."

I know a young adult female who merely got married. She was madly in love with her husband. And despite the fact that he had been "between jobs" for more than a year, showed no interest in planning the wedding ceremony, often ditched her to take surfing trips with his friends, and her friends and family raised not-and then-subtle concerns about him, she happily married him anyway.

Simply once the emotional high of the hymeneals wore off, reality set up in. A twelvemonth into their union, he's still "between jobs," he trashes the firm while she's at work, gets aroused if she doesn't cook dinner for him, and any fourth dimension she complains he tells her that she's "spoiled" and "arrogant." Oh, and he still ditches her to take surfing trips with his friends.

And she got into this situation because she ignored all 3 of the harsh truths above. She idealized love. Despite being slapped in the face by all of the red flags he raised while dating him, she believed that their love signaled relationship compatibility. It didn't. When her friends and family unit raised concerns leading up to the wedding, she believed that their love would solve their problems eventually. Information technology didn't. And now that everything had fallen into a steaming shit heap, she approached her friends for communication on how she could cede herself even more to make it work.

And the truth is, it won't.

Why exercise we tolerate behavior in our romantic relationships that nosotros would never always, ever tolerate in our friendships?

Imagine if your best friend moved in with you, trashed your place, refused to become a task or pay rent, demanded you melt dinner for them, and got angry and yelled at y'all whatsoever time you complained. That friendship would be over faster than Paris Hilton's acting career.

Or another situation: a homo's girlfriend who was so jealous that she demanded passwords to all of his accounts and insisted on accompanying him on his business organization trips to brand sure he wasn't tempted by other women. This woman was like the NSA. His life was practically under 24/7 surveillance and you could see it wearing on his self-esteem. His self-worth dropped to cypher. She didn't trust him to practise annihilation. And then he quit trusting himself to do anything.

Notwithstanding he stays with her! Why? Because he's in love!

Remember this:

Yous can fall in love with a wide multifariousness of people throughout the course of your life. You can fall in honey with people who are practiced for y'all and people who are bad for you. You tin fall in love in healthy means and unhealthy ways. You can fall in love when you're young and when you're sometime. Beloved is not unique. Love is non special. Honey is not scarce.

But your cocky-respect is. So is your dignity. And so is your ability to trust. In that location can potentially be many loves throughout your life, but once you lot lose your self-respect, your nobility or your ability to trust, they are very hard to get dorsum.

Beloved is a wonderful experience. Information technology's one of the greatest experiences life has to offering. And it is something anybody should aspire to feel and bask.

Simply like any other feel, information technology can exist salubrious or unhealthy. Like whatever other feel, it cannot exist allowed to define us, our identities, or our life purpose. We cannot let it eat us. We cannot cede our identities and self-worth to it. Because the moment we practice that, we lose dearest and nosotros lose ourselves.

Because yous demand more in life than dearest. Love is swell. Love is necessary. Love is beautiful. Just dear is non enough.