If you know me at all, you will know that I have recently gone through a break up. Without diving into my life story, I will say a few things for everyone who has, is, will be, going through a break up.
I was with A for 3 years. And I have nothing bad to say about my relationship with him, there isn’t anything really bad to say. I loved him more than I ever knew I had the capacity to love. As far as first relationships go, I had the best I could have ever asked for.
But here is something they don’t tell you about all-encompassing love:
It’s not enough.
And I don’t say this with bitterness, or anger, with jadedness, or despair. I say this with a brutal reality that I was forced to face, when I wasn’t really ready to face it. Love is not enough. Because there is more to life than love. And I know many of you will scoff and roll your eyes, that many of you are romantics who believe that ultimately love is the most important thing. And yes, maybe ultimately it is. But life is not lived through “ultimately”. Life is lived through so much more. Through this moment right now. Because life is full of money problems, and career choices, family issues, and personal disturbances.
Love is not enough because it isn’t the only thing we have.
You may love someone, but you may choose your career over them. You may choose your education, or your dreams over them. Because life is filled with so many things that sometimes we can’t have it all. Sometimes we drown in the options. Maybe love is that floating lifejacket in the distance.
But you’re better off just learning how to swim.
You can’t hold onto love and only love. You’ll be stunted, unfulfilled, empty, and forever wistful. There is so much more out there in the world, you can’t anchor yourself to only one aspect of it. And even after this long reality facing spiel, I will say this:
That even through it all, love is incredibly wonderful, and almost always worth it.
So love with everything you have, forever and then some. But please be aware that just loving someone isn’t enough. That every day you will have to work hard to make sure that every part of your life can coexist together, can blend in a way that works for both of you. And even if it doesn’t work, I hope you can look back on it fondly and with genuine affection.
Love freely, completely, and always.
Because though love is not enough, it is damn important.
| danielle
Streamers of Stardust 
First, it’s nice to see you writing again! I’ll definitely be keeping up with it.
So I have some thoughts on this because I know this train of thought. This is a conversation I’ve had a million times. Being that person who everyone comes to about their relationships, it amazes me how much this alone is discussed: “Love is not enough”.
In truth, I don’t have a significant amount of personal experience on the matter. I’ve had numerous poor relationships, and I’ve been single for years now. Surely part of this is the reality of my situation – being both extremely picky, and having weight issues, it leaves me with rare chances. It does however leave me a lot of time to observe and understand the relationship dynamics of those around me, something I have spent almost a decade quite focused on learning. Also, my last relationship, where I was engaged because I was silly and swept up in what I thought was love, but ultimately ended because of my realization of needing significantly more than that, helped me gain perspective.
The biggest impact of why we believe love is enough surely has to do with media. As far back as Hollywood goes, we have this emotional idealism, we have family values, we put the highest value on love. Sandra Bullock spends 90 minutes trying to get a guy to love her, and then she has love, so all is well, all is permanent. She’ll be happy forever, because she has found love. But what happens when she wakes up in the sequel and realizes she wants to go live in Europe? Or she can’t get past the fact that he lazes around the house and plays World of Warcraft all day (Bullock sure hates the video games)? Or, in what is becoming a slightly more common modern choice, she decides he alone is not enough to satisfy all the different things life can offer?
There is never a question that love is great. Love is an emotion that, while we don’t fully understand, makes us feel something that we otherwise miss. Yet love is merely a single ingredient for happiness and fulfillment. We have so many choices in a modern world, that for some, it will take a whole lot more than one ingredient. But you’re the chef, and life’s recipe is to your taste – and there’s nothing wrong with that.