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Ask almost any adult woman about love in her teen years and early twenties, and she will have stories to share and lessons she learned. Things she wishes she could go back and tell herself from the perspective of who she is now. Lessons she wishes she had learned much sooner. Would that girl have even listened? Probably not. When you’re young and in love, it can be all encompassing. Relationships can feel so complex and so consuming.
Even if that girl can’t hear it right now, I’m still going to share. Because maybe something will ignite some small flicker of knowing in her gut. Something she may not be able to admit to herself yet. Something she might not even have the capacity to understand and name. A reflection back to her, like a mirror. Maybe something here will be the beginning of her awakening.
These are some of the lessons about dating and healthy love that most of the strong women I know would pass on to their younger selves if they had the chance.
Love doesn’t hurt.
Healthy love never, ever hurts physically. That should go without saying, but we all know that it is more complex than that. If someone says they love you, but they hurt your body, they are an abuser. There is never an excuse, nothing that can make that better. If you’re being hurt physically, you have to seek help. It’s not your fault-it’s something inside of them. You can’t change it and it won’t get better without help.
There are ways to be hurt that are more subtle, but just as damaging as physical marks. If your partner makes you feel small, puts you down, calls you names, ignores your boundaries, cheats on you, lies to you, makes you cry constantly-that is not love, baby girl. That’s manipulation and abuse.
In healthy relationships, you will inadvertently hurt each other’s feelings. That is normal. A healthy partner will take accountability when they hurt you. They will apologize, validate your feelings, and most importantly will change their behavior immediately.
Healthy love doesn’t control.
A healthy partner does not need to control you. They won’t try to tell you what to wear, they won’t isolate you from your friends and family, they won’t always have to check up on you and verify where you are and who you are with.
Healthy love sets you free. A healthy partner gives you the space to be you. They know encourage you to have your own interests outside of the relationship. They are secure in your relationship and trust you to make your own decisions.
When it’s healthy, you will feel peace.
When you’re in a toxic or unhealthy relationship, you won’t feel at peace. You will constantly feel anxious. There will be big ups and bigger downs. You will have an internal voice nagging at you that something just isn’t right. You might try to push down that voice for a while, but it won’t go away.
A healthy love will bring you peace. You will be able to relax into it. You will have an internal knowing that it is right. You’ll feel safe. You will feel relief when you see them and spend time with them, not anxiety.
Healthy love is consistent. You won’t have to always question and wonder.
A red flag in a partner is someone that always leaves you guessing. You are never quite sure where you stand or how they feel. They say one thing, but their actions show something different. They are vague about how they feel about you. They may go days without texting you back and when they do, they act totally casual about it. If you express frustration, they play dumb.
A healthy partner shows up for you, consistently. You know exactly how they feel because they communicate and back it up. You can count on them. They let you know through their words and actions that you are a priority.
You won’t have to edit yourself.
A sign that someone isn’t for you, is that you can’t quite be yourself. You have to think about everything you say and do.
A relationship that is good for you is one where you can be authentically who you are-the silly, the sad, the fun, the bad moods-all of it. You can say what you think without feeling judged and you’re accepted for who you are.
Love won’t ask you to compromise who you are.
If someone pushes you to do things that you’re not comfortable with, they don’t respect you. If you are constantly in situations where you are expected to compromise your values, this is not your person.
A healthy partner respects your values and would never, ever expect you to step outside of who you are.
Healthy love is honest.
If they lie to you (including withholding important facts that they know you would want to know), then there is no foundation to build on. Someone that can easily lie once is most likely going to lie again and again. Once you’ve lost that trust, there’s really nowhere else to go.
The bare minimum you should expect from a relationship is honesty. You can’t make an informed decision about whether or not someone is good for you if you don’t have all of the information. Never settle for someone that can’t be honest with you. That is most likely a character issue and it most likely isn’t going to change.
Actions should match words. Every single time.
You can tell exactly who someone is by paying attention to what they do and their patterns of behavior. If you ignore their words, it won’t take long to see who they are by paying attention to their actions. If those two don’t match up, don’t waste your time.
You are worthy and deserving of the most beautiful kind of love.
When you’re young, sometimes the idea of love takes over and it feels confusing. It’s easy to confuse the idea of love with actually loving someone. We all want to find love and it’s tempting to settle for “good enough” when we find someone we click with.
Girl, good enough isn’t enough. You are deserving of the kind of love that builds you up, breathes life into you, walks beside you and grows with you. You deserve the kind of love that feels like you were walking through the world in black in white and suddenly it’s all in color. Do. Not. Settle. for “good enough.”
If they don’t choose you in the end, it isn’t a reflection of you.
Every woman that has been broken up with or cheated on has had moments where she felt “maybe I just wasn’t enough for him.” Let me stop you there. You were always enough. Just as you are.
If he didn’t choose you, it just means life is freeing you for better things to come. Take the lessons you learned in that relationship with you as you go into the next. And if you didn’t choose him? That’s okay too. Some people are meant to be your person for a while, but not forever. Maybe they were meant to teach you lessons that you needed to prepare you for the one that will be your forever person.
How do you know?
Women were gifted with a strong intuition and as you go through life, you get better at paying attention to that gift. You will know if it is wrong because you will feel it in your gut. It might be a tiny nagging feeling that just won’t go away. It might be louder than that. You will know. And when you do, don’t waste any more time stuck in a place that isn’t meant for you.
The same way your intuition will let you know if it’s wrong, you will feel it if it’s right, too. Follow your intuition and it will lead you to exactly where you’re meant to be.
