<yone wants to be loved. It’s as simple as that. While mulling over this week’s Viewpoint topic, I couldn’t come up with anything clever or witty to say. No matter how hard I tried, it just ended up sounding cheesy. For example, “You must love yourself before you can love others” and “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Now, those clichés sound lovely in theory, but everyone knows them. Everyone talks about them. That’s why they are clichés. So, for this article, I’m going to be honest about certain things that people don’t like to be honest about. Why people want and need each other, and why it’s so hard to be vulnerable. This may be verbal garbage, but at least it will be honest.
The truth is, people need each other, and it’s really hard to say so. Depending on another person is hard, but it’s just as hard being alone. As a 21st century woman, relationships are supposed to be in our hands. However, this is only true if we don’t want a relationship.
If we want a relationship, we are considered silly and weak. Wanting a relationship somehow goes against modern feminism, but so does wanting casual sex. It’s so confusing. In college, you are meant to explore. You are meant to love and to lose and to at least try to make some sense of it all. Wanting a relationship is normal, but it’s hard to figure out when another person likes you. It’s even harder to figure out when to risk it all. When to say, “I like you” and understand that we may not get the response we want. That’s what being an adult is all about. Trying not to focus on finding your “person,” while at the same time desperately wanting to find someone to just understand you. Becoming an adult is hard, because you are supposed to be independent. The thing is, I don’t want to be completely independent. I want someone to tell me that I’m not a total wreck, even though it’s impossible at my age to not be.
Even when you become “involved” with someone, it’s hard to tell them exactly what you need, and with social media, it’s very difficult to say that you need some space.
Relationships nowadays are all about unauthentic communication. Facebook and texting have made people in relationships connected at the hip. I don’t understand why people need to know where their significant other is at all times. It just makes the relationship insecure and insincere. Nothing is private anymore. Yes, I know that I said people enter relationships so they don’t feel alone, but privacy is different than being alone. Privacy allows people to be their own person, which is also what being an adult is all about. Not being part of a couple, but being an individual in a relationship. That way, if it turns out that you aren’t meant to be with that person, you are able to move on.
Loving someone is hard, and letting go is even harder. Relationships don’t last forever, but they are worth it. They are only destructive if we forget that youthful relationships aren’t meant to be serious. They aren’t meant to be a burden. They are meant to be fun, silly, a little bit crazy, just like we are. So, let’s start loving and stop overthinking it.