The Art Of Grown-Up Love: 30 Lessons You Learn After You Stop Believing In Fairy Tales
Love gets a lot better once you stop expecting it to look like a movie.
Alex Donin foodphotographer | Canva Writing about love is daunting because love itself feels impossible to define. It's towering, intimidating, and larger than any of us can really grasp. For years, I tried to make sense of it, to pin it down with tidy lessons and poetic conclusions, but love doesn't play by those rules. It's vast and intimidating, capable of undoing you in the best and worst ways — and yet, the challenge of trying to understand it is too fascinating to walk away from.
When I started thinking about everything I've learned about love, I realized I wasn't alone. Every writer, musician, and artist before me has wrestled with this same mystery. Their words helped me find my own, giving language to feelings I couldn't otherwise explain. These are the lessons that shaped my understanding — the truths that surface only after you stop believing in fairy tales and start learning the art of grown-up love.
The art of grown-up love: 30 lessons you learn after you stop believing in fairy tales:
1. Make a list, but don't worship it
It can be helpful to make a list of things you want in a romantic partner, and it can be equally beneficial to throw that list away. Love asks that we remain open and always ready for a surprise.
2. Love doesn't mean perfection
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"There were so many presumptions that I'd allowed to be built into my own mind about what a wife should be. I thought she should be a show-stopping cook and a brilliant entertainer, a nonstop quick wit, a wild thing in bed, an effortless nurturer... but if I can be honest, my grandmother was none of these things and she still enjoyed one of the most legendary lives and marriages that I've ever seen." — Kristine Gasbarre, How to Love an American Man
3. Be realistic.
"In generations past, there was far less talk of 'compatibility' and finding the ideal soulmate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for. In other words, some people in our culture want too much out of a marriage partner." — Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.
4. Let go when you need to
"The more I let people be who they are, instead of cramming them into what I need from them, the more surprised I am by their beauty and depth." — Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines.
5. Men and women aren't all that different
Contrary to popular belief, I don't buy the idea that men and women come from different planets. We both live here on Earth, and despite a few rudimentary differences, such as personal interests or ways of approaching the world, I see more similarities between people every year that goes by.
6. Even the toughest people feel deeply
Take, for example, the words of Charles Bukowski, who wrote extensively about booze and promiscuity, and then one day wrote this:
"There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out, but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. Then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there; I haven't quite let him die. And we sleep together like that with our secret pact, and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?" — Charles Bukowski, The Bluebird
7. Love takes courage
"Courage is an essential feeling to get us to take the action necessary to create a happy, vibrant relationship. With courage, you try new things with your partner in and out of the bedroom. With courage, you reveal your inner world to your partner and are interested in your partner. This leads to the feelings of closeness and positive intensity that make relationships come alive." — Todd Creager, marriage and family therapist.
8. Love is worth the pain
"But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears." — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.
9. Don't hold back
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"I'd been afraid to really connect, fearing that I was dealing with someone who wasn't as great as he appeared, or that my beauty and its need to share itself could be rejected. In the end, isn't the result the same? Whether he was good or not, I held back, and now I don't have him." — Kristine Gasbarre, How to Love an American Man
10. Love yourself first
"Until I learned to love myself, I was never ever lovin' anybody else." — Madonna, Secret.
11. Love deeply anyway
"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." — 1 Peter 4:8
12. Focus on what's real
"General opinion is starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there — fathers and sons; mothers and daughters; husbands and wives; boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends." — Hugh Grant, Love Actually.
13. Invest wisely
"In these bodies we will live; in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life." — Mumford & Sons, Awake My Soul.
14. Don't always follow your heart
My heart doesn't always know what it's talking about and shouldn't be the final authority.
15. Accept uncertainty
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"After a while, I figured I was in love, but I kept my fingers crossed when I said it, in case I was wrong." —Jillian Lauren, Some Girls.
16. Know when to let go
Know when it's time to let go of someone you care about, and then be brave enough to do it.
17. Love can be destructive
"We're going down, and you can see it, too. We're going down, and you know that we're doomed. My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room." — John Mayer, Slow Dancing in a Burning Room.
18. You can't change someone
"We may as well say goodbye because neither of us will ever be any different from what we are this minute." — Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt.
19. Loneliness still happens
"When I get lonely these days, I think, 'So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.'" — Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
20. Go slow, and give more than you take
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"Whatever your situation, opportunities to appreciate the connection of friendship and love often emerge from the attention you pay to both. Insight and meaning lurk in your own experiences and observations of others’ lives and choices. A connection that motivates growth or inspiration for productive, engaging action has the potential for sustaining the relationship, as long as there's a mutual benefit rather than a one-way street." — Ruth Schimel, Ph.D., life management consultant.
21. Don't numb your emotions
"I don't want to be a prude. But I wonder if by pretending that [physical intimacy] is emotionally and morally no-strings-attached, a person becomes an emotional prude. An emotional prude uses [physical intimacy] to escape the commitment and vulnerability required in a genuine relationship." — Tyler Blanski, Mud and Poetry
22. Love often requires forgiveness
It's that simple. It's that difficult.
23. Being single is not a failure
"We confer a lot of status and respect on people who are getting married. But there's nothing inherently more responsible or more admirable about being married. I'm thankful to be celebrating my 10th wedding anniversary this summer, but at the same time, I have a fair amount of friends whose marriages are ending — friends whose weddings we danced at, whose wedding cake we ate, whose rings we oohed and aahed over but that have been taken off fingers a long time ago." — Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet.
24. Love is worth it
My dad always told me that some of the hardest things in life would also be the most worthwhile. I'd say his words describe love perfectly.
25. Give love instead of chasing it
"Love is an action. It is something I aspire to bring to the world, rather than something I feel that I am owed." — Jillian Lauren, Personal Interview.
26. The best love feels bigger than you
"God is an experience of supreme love." — Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
27. Love is everything
"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." — 1 Corinthians 13:2
28. Love and loss always coexist
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"We are grieving the idea of losing them as we open to loving them. This is why love is also accompanied by a sacred tension where we are simultaneously feeling what it will be like to lose them one day, whilst also opening to loving them. To love fully is to accept loss fully. " — Mark Groves, human connection specialist.
29. In the end, love is what matters most
"When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge. They were all messages of love." — Hugh Grant, Love Actually.
30. Love is real
"Relationships are, alas, beautifully not bound to my theories about relationships. They're better. They're real. They follow no formula." —Tyler Blanski, Mud and Poetry.
Christy Krumm is a Christian freelance writer, food & wine blogger by day, and a restaurant employee by night.
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