" *The Enlightenment needs more shadow; the Romantic Movement less*. " 
-Mason Cooley

![72687004_2361516154113581_3648078997121662976_n.jpg](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmS8tJBWT2FzWBjGg7hX5WjEw2mPRxtH5tuoXjwyhxQZdN)

**We hold romantic relationships to such unfair standards that it is no wonder we flirt with profound despair when they don’t measure up**. Our vision of the ideal love is borderline illusional. Taking the fiction and relentlessly trying to make it a reality will ultimately result in some sort of catastrophe. The actors at play in our real-life stories can’t compete with those who maintain perfect composure in these so-called Hollywood movies.

Like children who can’t be disciplined unless there’s a promise of a reward, humans can’t meet their partner halfway, even if it means saving their very love. The wants and needs we demand in the course of a long-held friendship can’t compare to the ones we expect in a romantic partnership. **In the love department, our expectations are sky high, and our desire to make them less is nonexistent at best**.

**The problem lays in the fact that we approach romantic relationships with limited knowledge of what they truly entail, and too little motivation to continuously keep on working toward bettering our own selves**. The fact that we regard romantic relationships as the highest ideal to be attained is an error in itself. The promise of eternal love fragilely survives so long as the minds of two beings doesn’t decide otherwise the next day.

Perfect love doesn’t and never will exist - only human love does. To approach romantic love with an agenda filled with hopes, unhealed emotional wounds, expectations and endless needs, is to make sure that we’ll invite ourselves to a hall of suffering, sometime in between.
Friendships and relationships aren’t endeavors to be pursued solely for the hopes that they will fulfill our every wants and needs. **We ought to look at them not with a mindset of “what can I get out of this?”, but rather with a perspective of “what’s the best of me I can bring into this**?”

![5968884-George-Henry-Lewes-Quote-The-delusions-of-self-love-cannot-be.jpg](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmQBVq3WFETTi9PNGxXSkCYUDJpwRntvTkMvvPfa3dvwgj)



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