5 Love Lessons I Learned The Hard Way (So You Can Save Yourself The Heartache)

Who doesn’t love to be loved? But loving another soul with all your heart comes with a risk; if you don’t do it right, a chunk of your heart is lost… forever. Here’re some vital love lessons I wish my younger self knew.

Is there a right or wrong way to love? Isn’t love beyond all rightdoing and wrongdoing? Love is supposed to be the language that one heart speaks and the other understands and between them there is nothing off limits, no rules, and certainly no secrets!  

Maybe in a perfect world, love flows as freely as the river, twisting and turning between the rocks and boulders and smoothing out everything with its mere persistence, making its way, and reaching its destination, inevitably.

But we do not live in a perfect world, do we? Ours is a world where appearance matters more than substance, lies and rumors run faster than the truth, miscommunications increase equally with technological advances, and the past looms over the future like a dark looming cloud.

In the modern world, relationships have become transactional and love has become like an add-on scoop of ice cream in your tall glass of career, success, money, and personal freedom.

Don’t get me wrong here! All those things are extremely important, but we have forgotten love is the foundation – the base of that tall glass of the sweet elixir, we call life, not the cherry on top.

So in our fast-paced lives, love has taken a back seat, and that’s why relationships get ended over one silly fight, sharing one’s pain is now called “Trauma Dumping”, and smartphones are given priority over one’s partner.

Read: What Is Phubbing Behavior? The Dating Trend You Must Unfollow!

Nowadays, no one fights for a relationship; when things get hard, no one tries harder to make it work, and no one wants the pain – only the sunshine.

We are spoiled for choice and blocking and ghosting are normalized. One argument – one fight and swipe left and move on.

So, in this day and age, if you have a heart that’s full of old fashioned love, chances are you have had your fair share of heartache. And if you’re young and hopeful and entering the dating world to find that special someone or maybe even only a meaningful encounter, these love lessons are for you!

As someone approaching their 40s, I would like to share these lessons about love which I have learned the painful way and which can help you save yourself the heartache.

If you too are a hopeless romantic and tend to end up in all the wrong places for blindly following your heart, keep reading the 5 lessons of love.

Read: How To Make Long Distance Relationships Work? 7 Useful Tips!

5 Lessons of Love I Wish I Knew Sooner

Here’re the 5 lessons of love I learned the hard way:

1. It’s Not Always 50:50

Sometimes it’s 90:10, sometimes 70:30. When they have a bad day and take it out on you, instead of processing and managing their emotions, be calm, forgiving, and all the more loving.

Ask them if anything has made them upset. Offer them a beverage or a hug. A little touch on the shoulder, a smile of reassurance, and a gesture of compassion can brighten up their day and they will be opening up to you in no time, talking their heart out. And next time, when you will be in a bad mood, they will show up for you.

The love lessons are, don’t be afraid to love more, don’t keep scores, forgive, and remember that tough times can help you make the best memories and deepen your bond.

2. Complementary and Compatible

One of the lessons about love is unlearning some false knowledge, like when people say “You two are so different! What can you possibly have in common to talk about?”

It’s okay if you and your partner don’t have a lot in common. Maybe they’re older than you or you two are in completely different professions, or you come from two very different backgrounds. Doesn’t matter.

What’s important is that you two care about each other and respect each other. If you and your significant other have common core values, like you both want to help the needy or you both hate bigotry, then that’s all that you need.

Find out in which areas you complement each other. Be each other’s strength. And use every opportunity to learn about each other. This will help you more than anything else.

Read: May December Romances: 4 Ways To Make Your Age Gap Relationship A Success

3. You Have To Listen To The Brain

Hear me and hear me well – love is not fair and that’s the beauty of it. Here’s one of the less talked about lessons about love. If you want to keep your man or woman, don’t be afraid to be strategic sometimes.

Feeling angry because they’re posting their ex on socials? Before you decide to chew their head off, pause and think, will an angry outburst help your situation?

Or do you need to be calm and calculative about finding the whole truth and ensuring it doesn’t pose a threat to your relationship anymore?

Similarly, when their mom dishes it out or tries to create a rift between you two, don’t get frustrated, but handle the situation wisely.

4. Love Can Be Taught

Say you shared a song from your playlist with your partner and instead of listening to the lyrics and understanding your feelings, they tell you they have already listened to this number.

Don’t label them insensitive or think that they’re not invested in you. Sometimes people are wired differently and love is something that we learn along the way. This is one of the most important lessons about love no one talks about.

Teach them your love language and how you express and receive love. If you love to go to fancy restaurants or on shopping sprees, bring these things up gently in your conversations.

Most importantly, don’t make them feel attacked, belittled, or criticized when you are teaching them how to love you.

5. You Have To Love Being Alone

Yes, you read that right. That’s the prerequisite of love. The most important of the 5 lessons of love.

You have to enjoy your alone time and love your own company. Otherwise you will never know whether you truly love someone or just want to fill up a vacuum in your life.

It’s never a good idea to get into a relationship because of loneliness. You shouldn’t settle. Amp up your self-love, whether you’re single or partnered.

Take yourself out to movies, go to cafes, sit by the lake, or browse local bookstores – when you create a happy life for yourself, the right person with the right vibe finds you.

And when in a relationship, you make your “me time” a priority, it helps you shift some of the excess energy that you were directing on your partner and focus on yourself. Your relationship will get better when you learn to love being alone.

Trust me, if you master this, you will ace all the other love lessons discussed here.

Love ≠ Happiness

Consider this as a bonus. True and long-lasting love does not mean never-ending happiness. Love entails jealousy, insecurity, sleepless nights, fights, and the lows of despair, as well as togetherness, companionship, affection, joy, and the highs of ecstasy.

If you cannot embrace both, love is not for you. When you accept the rose, you accept the thorns too. Love is not all sunshine and rainbows – candle lit dinners and holding hands – passion and physical pleasure.

There will be days when your partner will not feel motivated, days when you two will be busy paying the bills, days when you will not feel good about your looks. How you overcome these days as a team will define love for you.

Read: Sculpting Each Other Into A Fine Masterpiece: The Michelangelo Phenomenon In Relationships

Those were the lessons about love. I sincerely hope these love lessons that I have learned the hard way will help you foster stronger relationships and enjoy more fairytales and less heartache. What other love lessons would you like to share with us? Leave a comment down below!

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