Posted September 22, 2019 by lynlynsays3 Comments OWLS Topics

OWLS: Lover – What does it mean to be in a loving relationship?

This month’s topic was requested by Flow because he wanted to write about romance and relationships.

Here’s the prompt:

When it comes to romantic relationships, what do we look for in a partner? What core values do we seek when it comes to building a healthy and loving relationship? For this topic, we will be discussing some of our favorite couples in pop culture and what they have taught us about love and relationships, the good and the bad.

I have zero experience in this topic because all of my “serious” relationships failed. I also tend to not manifest confessions to my unrequited crushes because I just have this “gut feeling” that they don’t feel the same way. Thus, I am not the right person to even give love advice because all my knowledge of romance comes from all the books I read, the songs I listened to, and the dramas I watched. (I mean this entire blog is pretty much all about love and romance genre-related media.) Yet even though I have accumulated so much knowledge, I have yet to actually experience what it truly means to be in love and being in a successful relationship. I think deep down, though, that’s like one of my most wanted desires.

Even though I have yet to experience that feeling of falling in love, I do have some first-hand knowledge of what love isn’t. Love isn’t just giving, nor is it just receiving. If you constantly give to someone and you aren’t given the same efforts and attention in return, you’re just wasting your time and you will feel underappreciated and devalued. And if you are constantly at the receiving end of a relationship, you’re just being a selfish narcissist who only cares about your desires and not the other person’s. I’ve been on both sides and having more of one thing than the other is just going to end up in disaster.

And so, there has to be an “equal” give and take between both partners. You don’t always have to be constantly giving and taking the same amount, but you should compensate with one another when one of you don’t have it all together.

A relationship is all that good stuff—commitment, loyalty, teamwork, communication, honesty, love, and a whole bunch of other qualities. I have the love theory in my head: I just haven’t found the right guy to apply it to or is willing to reciprocate and give a relationship a try with me. Yet even though I haven’t met the right guy, I know that it will happen one day. Everyone has a life partner or even a soul mate. What prevents us from meeting them is the bad decisions we make, our own personal demons we need to overcome, and the bad karma we accumulated along the way in our lives. Once we learn those life lessons, the right person will come around.

With these thoughts in mind, I don’t really have any pop culture media that I could refer back to. However, whenever I can’t express my emotions, music is the way to go.