Let me preface this by saying that I am a 21 year old, college student, about to graduate soon and I have never been in love. Not something you hear often, right? We are so accustomed to growing up in a culture where the word “love” is thrown around too often to count. We are so accustomed to growing up in a society that places relationships and love at the top of our priority list. I remember the day I admitted to someone that I had never told a guy that I loved him. Their response was of confusion and shock.
It has become so normal in our culture because we throw around the word as if it almost has no meaning. What does it even mean to be in love?
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I am at the point in my life where I am constantly seeing my friends get engaged. People I went to high school with are having babies. People are settling down, and yet here I am wondering where I went wrong.
To those who have never been in love, do you ever feel like you went wrong somewhere? If everyone around me is finding love (or has found love) why can’t I? What does it say about me as a person?
Don’t get me wrong, I am such an advocate for my friends getting married. It gives me so much joy when I see happiness in their lives. But I am programmed to think that if I have yet to find something like that for myself, I'm doing something wrong.
One of the most recent questions I have been given on this topic is, “Are you just not ready?” And my response to that question is, probably not. It might be that I’m not ready to be vulnerable to just one person. It might be that I’m not ready to be loved unconditionally. It might even be that I don’t think I deserve that kind of love. In all honesty, I have been programmed to think that love is something we should seek.
However, anyone who has been in love will tell you just the opposite. This is our problem in society: we believe love is something you actively seek. Why do you think we have dating websites like Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, Grindr, Match.com, or even OkCupid?
Should love be something that comes when least expected, or are we supposed to seek love? Whatever the answer to that question is, I’m not too sure. These are some of the questions that we, as a culture, need to continue to ask ourselves. Is love worth waiting for? Or is love something we must find ourselves? It's important to understand questions like this because in the mind of someone who's never been in love, it still doesn't make much sense.
