Ten Inconvenient Truths About Love

This guest article from Psych Central was written by Leigh Pretnar Cousins, MS

Today I am the Al Gore of romance, compiling a list of ten things which strike me as true, though not pretty, about Love.

Is facing them refreshing? Healthy? One of those Hey, look at that elephant in the room! sort of things?

That’s what I’m going for here.

And let’s see if you agree with me, and whether you’ve got some you’d like to add.

1. Sometimes, when we love someone, we do them more harm than good.
2. Sometimes, we love more than one person.
3. It can be really hard to end a relationship, and therefore we often do it in messy, confusing, painful ways.
4. Sometimes it’s impossible to let go of an old love until you’ve got a new one in its place.
5. We lie because we want something very badly, that we are convinced we can’t have honestly.
6. Being evasive, omitting important details, creating distractions, and all those other forms of “spin,” count as lying.
7. We lie about why we lie. It’s not to protect the other person’s feelings or because “they couldn’t handle the truth.” The real reason is #5, above.
8. We all lie.
9. Your lover doesn’t always act in your best interest. Nor do you always act in theirs.
10. “I love you” may mean a great deal to the person having that feeling, but it often doesn’t gets translated into action that connects in a meaningful way to the loved one’s life.  The loved one may not even notice, let alone appreciate, the fact of being loved.

My hope is that we read these and accept that, yeah, this is what people do.

And in doing so we accept and forgive the people we love…and ourselves.