Many In This Generation Have Love Terribly Wrong
Every day of my entire life I’ve gotten to watch a happy couple raise my siblings and I.
I know I’m lucky to have experienced great parents, but let’s not focus on that too much. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that I’ve gotten a front row seat to how love is (actually) done for 24 years of my life.
This doesn’t make me an expert on love at all, but I’m pretty sure I know what it looks like.
And to be honest with you, most of the young people today have got it all wrong.
There’s A Major Personality Problem
First off, I see a lot about “resting bitch face” on my Facebook feed from time to time. A lot of girls say they can’t help it — which is probably true — but that doesn’t mean they can’t at least try to smile a little more, right?
My girlfriend’s roommate and best friend in college wasn’t always fun to be around. It was hit or miss with her.
Sometimes I’d walk in and she’d have a smile for me. Other times I’d walk in and it was like I didn’t exist.
A lot of girls had that problem at my school, actually.
Like they’re owed something.
Everybody wasn’t always that way, though. There were a couple girls who were actually fun to be around. They always had a smile accompanied by a widening of the eyes that made you feel appreciated.
I liked those people the most.
But then there were others who had an ego the size of a building. I didn’t like them that much.
Even guys were that way, too.
And you know what? I’m not even going to act like they didn’t have personal problems of their own — but compared to some people living in third world countries…
Their problems were fucking irrelevant.
For some reason a lot of people I meet these days just aren’t nice.
Period.
Where’s The Appreciation?
The most important part of being in a relationship is appreciation.
We like to be appreciated for things, right? Words of affirmation work the same way that water does for plants.
That’s why I choose to write about certain people in my life — because I know they’ll appreciate it.
But for some reason this generation of kids don’t appreciate much of anything anymore.
I honestly think it’s because we’ve had it too good.
There’s too many gadgets being shoved in our hands whenever the new version comes out and too many likes flooding our Instagram accounts.
We’ve become accustomed to standing in the spotlight.
Because of this, we don’t really appreciate what comes to us — we expect it instead.
Expectations suck.
Expectations are just another way to say entitled.
We feel entitled to the behaviors of someone else when we’re in a relationship because we’ve always gotten what we wanted and love is supposed to be glamorous, etc. etc.
The problem is that appreciation is kind of like a credit card statement. It’ll come due at some point. Whoever you’re with isn’t just going to keep loving you unconditionally without asking for anything in return.
It builds resentment, and that resentment is going to surface sometime down the road.
We need appreciation. Good relationships are built on it. GOOD ones.
It’s not enough to look perfect in pictures together. Which leads me to my next point.
Appearances Mean Nothing
I’ve taken some damn good pictures with some of the most incompatible people I’ve ever been with.
You would expect to see some of these in an Abercrombie store or something.
But appearances mean nothing.
We end up chasing a good picture to show everyone we’re happy when we really aren’t.
We fall in love with the appearance more than anything else.
My best friend told me I should try to keep my romantic business to myself on social media — and he was right. I don’t need to show everyone I’m happy, because I know I am.
That’s a good thing to keep in mind.
Showing Love Isn’t Stupid
Couples like talking to each other. They like texting. They like calling. They like sitting across from each other at dinner.
My Dad calls my Mom every day at 3:30 on his way home. She always answers with that high-pitched voice that emanates excitement.
Always.
That’s because she genuinely loves talking to my father. He calls her because he genuinely loves talking to her, too.
For some reason this generation passes that off as being corny.
That it’s fake.
Seeing how my parents have been married for 32 years, I would say otherwise.
Even my sister’s husband, the most terrible cell phone person imaginable, got back to her and called her every day when they were doing long distance.
When you get down to it, you TALK to the people you love. You can’t stand not doing it. You have this insatiable drive to know about their day even if all they did was sit at a desk.
That’s love.
I don’t care how good or bad you are with a cell phone. If you really love someone, your heart can’t take not communicating with them for too long.
I could honestly go on and on about it, but in my experience you can boil success with love down to doing a couple things well:
- Showing appreciation regularly.
- Willingness to meet the other person in the middle.
- Communication.
- Leaving your ego at the door.
That’s really pretty much it. I just think the main problem with people today is that our egos are way too big. What do you think?www.lastdon.org
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