When Love Isn\’t Enough

So love and relationships seems to be a theme for me this summer. It seems like that\’s something that doesn\’t want to let me be, and so here I am, writing about it a second time.
I\’ve come to realise that a lot of the time love isn\’t enough. Why? I really don\’t know.
Relationships are work, they don\’t just happen, and sometimes even when love is involved, they don\’t work.
Sometimes it\’s just too much stress,  sometimes there are too many differences, sometimes past mistakes, choices, etc come into play and makes something that should be pure and simple, complicated.
Love isn\’t enough when you dream differently, it isn\’t enough when you give up easily. It\’s like when you\’re in secondary school, and you feel like you\’re the smartest kid out there, only to get to uni… and you realise maybe you weren\’t as smart as you thought and maybe, just maybe you kinda need to work hard now! At that point in time you have two choices. You can put in the effort and work, or you can say it\’s too hard and flunk!
Love isn\’t enough when you\’re in love with the idea of being loved. When you\’re more concerned with being loved than loving. Love isn\’t enough when you fail to talk. It isn\’t enough when you assume.
The more I sit and think, the more I realise that you can\’t base your relationship solely on love. Because as much as I can be hopelessly Romantic, I can also be very practical. And like Adekunle Gold wrote in his song, \”No be love we go chop\”
Love is important, oh so important, but when things like trust, loyalty, compatibility and respect are missing, then when the feeling of love disappears, it becomes difficult to see why you started in the first place.
Love isn\’t always enough. A lot of the time you have to fight for it, and even after fighting for it you have to constantly apply it. You can\’t live in the honeymoon phase forever, and at some point in time, when reality sets in, and the feeling starts to ebb away, if you don\’t know why you\’re in it and if you don\’t have the backing of other things, it\’s very easy to give up.

So, no, this isn\’t a handbook to getting it right. I haven\’t figured it all out. I\’m just here giving my two cents on love. Before you commit to someone, you have to know why you\’re in it. Honestly and truthfully. You have to be true to yourself, your life, and your future. Relationships should have an end goal. And before you step into one, you have to consider the end goal, because sometimes… Love isn\’t always enough.