Love, Actually: Letting Go of Expectations to Embrace Reality

Love isn’t always like it is in the movies.

Falling in love doesn’t always happen in an instant, like a dark room that’s suddenly lit at the flip of a switch. Sometimes it’s more like a slow and steady sunrise that gradually turns the night into day, transitioning at its own unrushed pace.

Maybe love is less like an adrenaline-pumping rollercoaster ride filled with dramatic ups and downs, but rather a safe and steady car ride that gently rocks you to sleep, like a lullaby, in a blanket of safety.

Maybe a memorable love story isn’t always one that is riddled with conflict and unpredictability, keeping you on your toes in a “will we, won’t we” dance, but rather the opposite: stable and predictable, filled with the certainty of one’s affection and clarity of intention, rather than guessing games and mixed signals masked by the thrill of possibility.

Maybe the process of deepening a relationship isn’t like a crash diet where progress is made in one momentous shift, but rather small and consistent efforts made day-by-day, sometimes hardly noticeable, until you look back in awe at the amount of depth, intimacy, and trust you’ve built together, and the collection of memories and inside jokes you’ve made.

Maybe romance doesn’t always come in the form of fancy candlelight dinners, but in the form of cackling laughter shared between two people while strolling through the local Superstore doing ordinary, everyday errands.

Maybe love isn’t characterized by the complete absence of unpleasant feelings, but in the enduring commitment that one fiercely chooses in the face of such unpleasant experiences.

Maybe falling in love doesn’t always feel like an all-consuming rush where you can’t eat or sleep, but rather like a gentle sense of peace and knowing—a strange sense of ease and simplicity that contrasts the dramatic depictions of Hollywood romance.

Unlike in the movies, love doesn’t always have to be complicated and dramatic, hot and cold, rocky and unpredictable, to be considered “thrilling”. Sometimes, love is simple. Calmly, beautifully, wonderfully simple. Gloriously safe and stable.

If we’re not careful, we can let our expectations of what love is supposed to look like get in the way of appreciating what love actually is. If we keep holding on to overly idealistic expectations of romance, we might fail to recognize how it manifests in our everyday lives.

So maybe it’s true: love is nothing like it is in the movies. Reality is often far less glamorous than our expectations. But that doesn’t mean reality is any less beautiful. If anything, it is even more so, because it is, well, real.

— Celine