“Learn to walk away when something is no longer serving your peace.”

THE CHALLENGE: So during this term, my professors are encouraging us to do a 30 for 30 challenge where we write for 30 minutes a day for 30 days to better identify our writing styles and voices. Of course no one in my cohort knows about this site, but I am slightly taking the challenge. If you've noticed, I’ve been publishing more topics more frequently, although I don't have enough topics to write out a new post each day. #FutureDrRay

There has been a phrase that I noticed I hear more often nowadays, in movies, shows, books, captions…every where. And the phrase is “Love isn’t enough.” - What do you guys think about this?

I can count on one hand how many men I’ve said “I love you” to in a romantic way. I told you guys, I don’t have a trail of relationships behind me. The last man I said those words to, it was a surprise to me and I think it was a surprise to him too, but he felt it and one night he gazed into my eyes and gently said, “Tell me”. And when the words came out he says, “I never heard you say that before” and he said it to me and also said, “Raya, You have no idea how much I love you.” To this day, I still don’t know what he meant by that. A little background, we had known each other for a few years already and fooled around on and off, went on different small trips together, but we never gotten that close until that time. And we were so into each other and I was hesitant at first, because it was unexpected and it felt great (I think I even wrote about it, actually I can probably go back to the older posts and narrow down when we started getting close and how I was feeling about it. But it fizzled out and I am not too sure why maybe I was too busy or he was too busy or we didn’t make enough time for each other, I don’t know. So I guess love wasn’t enough. Where is this man now? Ummm…we still speak to each other, but he is figuring things out with someone else…I think I am not too certain about that. He still hasn't officially confirmed anything. Maybe they want to have a baby first. Joking.

And if I go further back, I did love the father of my children at one point, but again it wasn’t enough for me to still want to be with him. It did hurt to leave, but I wasn’t getting what I needed in that relationship and I was tired to hurting and him not putting our family first.

There is an author named Mark Manson who wrote an article titled the same as this topic. Here is a little exerpt from what he wrote, he lists 3 truths about love:

The problem with idealizing love is that it causes us to develop unrealistic expectations about what love actually is and what it can do for us.

1. LOVE DOES NOT EQUAL COMPATIBILITY

Just because you fall in love with someone doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good partner for you to be with over the long term. Love is an emotional process. Compatibility is a logical process. And the two don’t bleed into one another very well.

The other two things he lists are Love does not solve your relationship problems and love is not always worth sacrificing yourself for. I think this is very eye opening for many of us and can help us look at relationships differently and can guide us to weed out the idealistic thoughts about what love is and isn’t and focus more on relationship types of behaviors that withstand the test of time.

So the guy I mentioned first, it’s hard to say what is definitive between us. I believe we have always treated each other slightly differently then how we treat other people and I won’t get into those details and I don’t think we have always been very forthcoming with one another which has lead to multiple misconceptions of each other over the years. We are opposite and similar in several ways, but I do believe we care about each other in some regard even though we may not love each other the same way we did when we gotten close at one time. And I don’t ever like to say for certain how something will be because we never know how things will play out. Like I said, we weren't always for forthcoming with each other and I think if we had been a little more transparent then our communication would be different today. Although, with my ex, I am very certain we will not be close or become good friends and the only reason I say that is because he has blown away so many chances to do right by our children, that I cannot fathom putting the distance away between us. There’s just some things I will never accept.

Now matter how much you may love someone or think you love someone, I think Mark Manson is on to something and it’s not just him, if you do a web search of this title “Love Isn’t Enough” you will find many articles about this topic. I guess people have come to realize emotions fade in and out, but it’s what we continue to do or show people is what keeps a relationship going and hopefully moving forward in a positive way.

Full Article by Mark Manson HERE.