Ali Iacono – Staff Writer –
Love, isn’t it great? Some of you may be nodding your heads with enthusiasm thinking, “Heck yes it is!” While the rest of you think I’m absolutely nuts for asking that question.
Now I’m no expert on love, but I can say through personal experiences I have seen the good and bad that comes with being in love.
Relationships have different stages. First, there’s the crush stage. During this stage you find yourself almost creepily obsessed with a single being. You’ve completely dedicated all of your time to this person. They have established themselves as this mythical creature in your real life fairytale. You have dedicated the left column of your school notes to practice scriptwriting the two of your names surrounded by a series of various sized hearts. This one person is the topic of every conversation you have with your friends, family, and cat. You are completely under this person’s spell and you don’t mind it for a second.
Assuming this person feels the same way about you, we then move on to the second stage—the honeymoon stage. This stage usually lasts roughly three months. I also like to refer to it as the “puppy love” stage. This is when your obsession turns into confession. You both can finally unleash your emotional attachments to one another without any fear or regrets (though you might want to leave out the details of your cat bonding sessions).
You surround yourself with this person every day. Days that can’t be spent together are spent writing mushy Facebook posts on each other’s walls. Every phone call ends with something like, “No you hang up first!” Sporadic gift exchanges are a must, new nicknames are constantly being generated, and skipping while holding hands in public may occur more frequently than necessary. All this leads up to the big moment when the “L bomb” is dropped. That’s right, I’m talking the big moment when those three little yet powerful words escape your mouths—“I love you.”
Once the love bug has been released from within and escaped through your mouth, prepare yourself for a whirlwind of events. Such occasions may include meeting the folks, getting professional photographs taken, talks of marriage, popping out babies and contemplating getting each other’s names tattooed to illustrate your eternal love for one another. The next few months of your relationship will zoom by as you and your future spouse float on that marveled love cloud.
However, that white, fluffy cloud you two have become comfortably nestled on will eventually turn into a storm cloud. That cloud will rain on your little love parade that formed over the months. That’s when you know you’ve reached the next and potentially final stage of your relationship—the comfortable stage.
You’ve surrounded yourself by this other person for so long that you know everything there is to know about them. Some of the things you know you probably could’ve gone without knowing. The puppy dog love has aged and suddenly things aren’t so cute and fuzzy as they once were. Fights will happen… a lot. Most of the fights will be over little things like whose favorite television program takes precedence on a Sunday night (The Walking Dead will always prevail) or about that random stranger you probably glanced at for far too long as they walked by.
Some fights are minor but others are World War III status. Harsh words will be exchanged. Hand gestures will be swung around carelessly. Migraines will become a regular thing. At least one of you will cry at some point. Taylor Swift songs will comfort you at night when you’re sleeping alone for the first time in months. This is the moment in your relationship when you realize how much you actually cannot stand your significant other. You’ve reached a bump in the road and now it’s time to decide which path you will take next. You will either realize the good outweighs the bad and you cannot bare to live without this person in your life forever, or you realize love has blinded you for quite some time now and it’s time to face the reality that this person is probably not the one for you.
Love is a challenge we will all endure at one point or another. It’s not an easy thing to go through and anyone that says otherwise is weird. Maintaining love is a full-time job and you have to be prepared for the best and the worst. Overall, it’s a beautiful thing that we don’t always cherish as much as we should. If you have someone special acknowledge it and, more importantly, hold onto it.
