On Love, Myths, and Messy Truths
Yesterday, I stumbled across a post on Substack, probably written by a young woman (I didn’t investigate), and it went like this…
“You deserve someone who is obsessed with you. You deserve someone whose exact type is you. Someone who loves you like they’ve loved you through many lifetimes. You deserve someone who notices everything about you that makes you magical. To be loved is to be treasured.”
Aww, poetic. Slightly unsettling. Definitely optimized for high-vibe sharing.
As someone who’s been in a long-term relationship—meaning someone who has weathered many ups and downs—I was curious about the comments. Unsurprisingly, they were a mixed bag of dreamy sighs and cold-water splashes.
There were the romantics: “This is exactly what I want!”
The self-lovers: “That someone is me.” (Admirably independent, I must say.)
And the seasoned skeptics:“This sounds like someone young. Relationships are work, not fantasy.”“There’s no such thing as an ‘exact’ type.’” “I don’t want someone obsessed with me. That’s not love, that’s creepy.”
And the ever-bleak realist: “Not everyone deserves this kind of love—and many can’t even reciprocate it.”
And you know what, my love-curious friend? I think they’re all right—including the original post. In their own ways.
That post was a flare shot into the sky by a generation of women waking up to the fact that they do deserve so much more than what patriarchy, capitalism, dating apps—and, honestly, just men—have handed them. That’s powerful. Necessary. Revolutionary, even.
But we also have to admit we’ve been marinated in Disney plots and Hollywood climaxes—where the closing credits roll just as the dishes start to pile up and the sex begins to get boring. It’s easy to confuse love with the trailer version of it.
Social media is flooded with declarations of what we “deserve,” what we should demand, what we need, and what we should abandon at the slightest hint of imperfection. As though love isn’t messy, wildly inconvenient, and sometimes just painfully dull.
In today’s loverlands, there seems to be no space in the narrative for the very real, very unsexy labor of loving someone over time. There’s no clause in the fantasy for the weeks when your partner is distant, or depressed, or you simply cannot stand the way they chew, breathe, or exist. Or when you are distant, or depressed, and your partner can’t stand the way you chew, breathe, or exist. No one posts, “You deserve someone who, despite occasionally making you want to push them off a metaphorical cliff, still shows up with croissants and awkward apologies because they care.”
We’ve also forgotten that in the wide open party that is social media, not everyone is speaking from the same chapter. A 20-year-old in a situationship is not going to sound like someone in a 25-year relationship who’s been through chemo with their partner. And they shouldn’t. There’s validity in all of it—naïveté is not a flaw; it’s a phase.
That’s one reason discourse online so often feels like shouting into a canyon: we’re all at different altitudes, arguing about different weather.
If we want to talk about love in a way that actually matters, we have to decolonize it—not just from patriarchy, but from perfectionism, colonialism, capitalism, and algorithmic dopamine addiction. Love isn’t a reward for good behavior. It’s not a prize for being pretty, or “healed,” or spiritually optimized. Love is a practice. A risk. A high. A pain. A decision made over and over again. Sometimes even when the butterflies are long gone.
And as someone who has also experienced abusive relationships, I want to be clear: this is not a defense of tolerating unacceptable, manipulative, or violent behavior. Never. But it is a call to stop falling for the narrow, glossy expectations society has placed on love. And to begin decolonizing love, the way we’re learning to decolonize everything else.
Love is diverse. It shows up in ways we never expected, in forms we haven’t been taught to recognize, in constellations that don’t show up on society’s radar.
To be loved isn’t always to be treasured. Sometimes, it’s to be tolerated. To be witnessed in your most unlovable moments—and still met with a presence that stays.
And that, too, is a sacred practice. Maybe even the most sacred of all.
If this resonated with you, moved you, or made you pause and reflect – consider this your cue. I’ve set up a virtual tip jar via Buy Me a Coffee. No monthly commitments, no strings, no memberships required.
Your sweet kindness helps keep the thoughts flowing, the energy exchange intact, and the glow of my inner goddess alive. It won’t fix capitalism, but it might buy me five minutes of joy (or at least a cortado).
Gracias. Thank you. Jërëjëf. Merci. Obrigada. Danke. Arigatō. Medaase. Grazie. Hvala. Tack. Asante. Shukran. Teşekkürler. Dziękuję.
