Today I want to share 6 common love myths that tend to sabotage people’s relationship lives when they believe them.
Unfortunately, love is vastly misunderstood and also misrepresented in popular culture.
Combined with a genuine lack of standard relationship education, this creates a perfect storm around what love means, what it is, how to get it, maintain it and enjoy it.
Here are six misconceptions about love I see most often in my coaching practice.
1. Love conquers all
If you love someone romantically, you can still be wrong as a romantic partner for them.
You can deeply love someone and they can deeply love you, but a relationship between you both can still be a disaster.
This doesn’t mean “it wasn’t true love,” it just means that at this time, coupledom between the two of you is not meant to be.
2. Love is an excuse for acting out
Sometimes when we fall in love, we get comfortable and feel like we’ve “conquered it” or “won” because the other person loves us back.
We tell ourselves that because there’s love there, or we have feelings for someone, we can act out, we can cling, we can generally allow ourselves to act in ways that we’d be embarrassed to admit to our friends.
When we let this happen, we allow our shadow selves to come out and play. We let ourselves go emotionally, and stop protecting the other person’s feelings.
When they’re hurt, we justify our shabby behavior with how we truly love them and “they aren’t going anywhere.”
Then the relationship goes off the rails and we tell ourselves it wasn’t meant to be or that it wasn’t true love.
The truth is that behind closed doors we acted like that person would never leave us and we’re send reeling when they call our bluff.
The truth is, because someone loves you, they don’t automatically have to put up with lousy treatment from you and vice versa.
3. Love automatically implies pain
One big problem is the belief that once you fall in love, you have to overcome obstacles to “make it work.”
This is heavily shown in Hollywood’s version of true love, since without a conflict or romantic tension, there isn’t much of a movie to watch.
As a result, people manifest all kinds of terrible situations to support the mistaken belief that they need to strive, work and overcome to have a good relationship.
Loving someone doesn’t require that you strive and contort yourself in an attempt to “make it work.” Love is an emotion.
Relationships often do require work, but it’s usually more the staying present, communicating and working on one’s issues variety.
Not the “convince someone you REALLY DO love them” type so commonly shown in the movies.
4. You are obligated by someone else’s love for you
The fact that you two love each other (or they love you) doesn’t automatically mean that this relationship is right for you or that you are obligated to stick around.
If the relationship is wrong for one person, it’s wrong for both people.
The fact that you’re going to hurt someone if you leave them cannot— and should not- make you stay if the relationship is wrong for you.
Guilt is a powerful emotion that will snuff out your happiness if you let it.
5. Love is scarce and rare
Love is all around if you choose to look for it.
So are people with whom you could have a great relationship. It takes digging, but it’s doable.
If you adopt the belief that you can’t go out and find love with someone else, you’ll cling to bad relationships and make decisions based on lack.
Fear based decisions aren’t rooted in the greater good, they are contorted by your mistaken view of the world.
When it comes to romantic love, the results will keep you stuck and mired in what you hope a relationship could be, rather than what it is.
Our fears lie to us. Fear tells us we might never find anyone else and that if we let go, we might never be happy again.
This is simply not true. It’s our fear trying to protect us from taking a leap into the unknown.
6. You must love yourself before anyone else can love you.
The idea that you must love yourself completely before someone else can love you is one of the most commonly repeated myths about love that happens to keep people super stuck.
Some can love you with their whole heart and never speak to you. I meet and hear about people in coaching all the time who hate themselves but are dearly loved by others. It’s a shame.
If it were true that everyone had to love themself first to be loved by others, this situation would be impossible.
I’m not saying that self love is not incredibly valuable, it’s just that “achieving self love” can be a big diversion from going out and doing the hard and often uncomfortable work of finding romantic love.
Because why bother to put yourself out there if you can’t be loved since you don’t already love yourself?
It’s worth mentioning that if you are on shaky terms with yourself it will probably be difficult and uncomfortable for you to be a good partner to someone else.
But the fact that you’re new around these parts doesn’t mean you are automatically unlovable.
We only get one human life, so if you want romantic love, you might as well try to go around the learning curve.
The love you feel for anyone else comes from inside you.
And, in turn any love you feel coming from someone else also comes from you.
You will probably feel both of these more when you allow yourself to be human and get out of your own way. This is enough.
Much love,
Elizabeth
