A few years ago, I saw a video on social media where a husband went to his wife and said that he was done: he asked for a divorce. The wife was devastated but promised to do as he asked if he would meet her each day and give her a hug for the rest of the month. He, unenthusiastically, agreed. The rest of the video is them meeting up in different spots where they’d shared special moments together. By the end of the month, he didn’t want to let her go because he finally remembered why he loved her and how much he longed to keep holding her in his arms.

It is videos like this that give me hope when it comes to love, but loving someone isn’t easy. It’s usually confusing, maddening, difficult, and life changing, but in the end, it’s making it when you’re happy as well as when you’re sad that makes it worth it. There’s a quote by Frank Ocean that goes, “When you're happy, you enjoy the music, but when you're sad, you understand the lyrics.” Both parts make love grand. However, it’s the finding of love as well as holding on to it that makes love difficult, so I came up with 6 things that I think everyone should remember when it comes to love. Here are the first 3. Look for my article next week to see the next 3!

#1 Soulmates Don’t Exist

Too often I see relationships die because they are based on lies or physical attraction alone, but I’ve also seen relationships that were based on a deeper love. In a religion class I took a few years back, we got into a discussion about soulmates and how you know who the right person for you is. The teacher drew three circles on the board that were in a row and overlapping a little bit. He said that the first circle represented the group of individuals with whom we’d be most compatible in a relationship with, while the second would be a relationship that you’d have to work at more, and the third was where the relationship would be very difficult, but could still work if you put forth enough effort. “No one has a soulmate,” he told us. As hard as it all was for me to understand, it helped me realize something very important: any relationship could work and ending it at the first sign of trouble isn’t the answer.

#2 Marriage Isn’t For ‘You’

I titled this section as “Marriage Isn’t For ‘You’” because, well, it isn’t. Marriage is what you bring to the table: it’s for your significant other. Marriage is supposed to happen because two people need each other. Both sides are equally important and both contribute to the whole what the other side can’t. This is what makes love so amazing, so don’t find someone that you feel like you have to carry all the time because marriage isn’t all for the person you love either. It’s about what they bring to the relationship as well. When both sides are giving, that’s when a relationship becomes whole.

#3 Put Down The Cell Phone

I heard something the other day that really made sense: we should love people and use things, not use people and love things. Why, then, do we tend to spend more time with our phones than we do with each other? It IS the age of technology and having such great devices that can do so much should give us the opportunity to love and care more, not escape from life and learn to be lazy. Talk to each other instead of complaining to everyone else in the world through social media where all they see and care about are the words on a screen.

It’s true that relationships can be complicated. Sometimes it takes a while before you’re able to accept someone as the other half of your world, but nothing is more rewarding. Nothing can compare to love.

(Don’t forget to look for my article next Monday where I talk more about it.)