We all have that one friend who gets back with their boyfriend or girlfriend after breaking up with them so many times. No matter how much they complain about them, they cannot seem to let them go. This is because we, as humans, desire companionship. Companionship, by definition, means “A feeling of fellowship or friendship”. Every human being has had the thought, “I just wish someone understood how I felt”. Frankly, nobody is ever going to 100% understand you.
This is the biggest misconception of them all. We see romance in the movies, on social media, in books, in history, and we all crave that perfect, passionate, explosive romance. The kind that makes your heart melt. We crave love because humans are weak. We aren’t able to satisfy ourselves ever; we always want more. When we think we’re content, something bright and shiny comes before our eyes, and we want it. When our hearts hurt, we wish we had someone who would always be on our side. When we feel lonely, we wish for someone to hold tight. Someone to tell us it’s going to be okay, even when we don’t believe it. That is why we yearn for connection.
One thing I realized about our world today is that humans let other humans get away with bad behavior all the time. I remember one of my friends was telling me that some friends in her friend group are rude people, but she continues to be friends with them because they’ve been friends forever. As people, we need to step it up because why are we just continuing to be in friendships where we experience belligerence? No matter how much hardship the friendship or relationship contains, they continue to ignore the behavior or stay together because of the time spent together. For some people in relationships, they’ve been very vulnerable with each other that it’s hard to break up that “soul-tie” they have. After many break-ups, they can’t do anything but get back together. That closeness we feel with a person isn’t always positive. Maybe you were never meant to be that close with them, and you let them in anyway; now that they know so much about you, you can’t let it go.
I’m sure we’ve all heard of the concept of “love-bombing” in relationships, but if you didn’t, here’s your definition. The term “love-bombing” means to have a major infatuation for someone right off the bat. The sour part of love-bombing is that it eventually leads people to not be interested in the person anymore. The same thing happens in friendships. I know we’ve all experienced when we meet a person and we connect with them so much on a friendship level. You quickly click with that person in a short amount of time, and you have the desire to tell them your deepest, darkest secrets and every thought that crosses your mind. The truth is, to build intimacy with someone, the answer isn’t to tell them all your “lore” or secrets, but to slowly build it and not rush in. In romantic relationships, when this happens, people usually end up hurting each other after sharing vulnerability. This not only hurts for a little while, but it leaves a lasting effect on you, which in turn makes you want to be with this person you were never meant to be with, or it leaves you with a broken heart that will most likely take a long time to get over. I was in a friendship with these 2 girls for a long time; they were my best friends. After we stopped being friends, I would think about them every day for months. I would cry multiple times a week for the first couple of months. Through that, I learned that our hearts are tender and they need to be nurtured like the rest of our body does. When we encounter those people who break up with someone and immediately start looking for a new person to be with, we need to be concerned. This person is so desperate to fill that hole in their heart that they are immediately seeking another person when they aren’t emotionally ready for that.
The strong desire that people have for romance and love has made our world so toxic. People are always going out of their way to find a new person to be with. They think that they can build an amazing relationship with any good-looking person they see, but this is false. If love is so valued and seen as precious, wouldn’t we think that it would take more than seeing a cute person to get to that beautiful part? In theory, we all think this, but we still constantly search for a person to wholly understand us, so we go out looking for the next person to satisfy our souls. Love indeed is so beautiful, but as people, we need to wait to form a connection with a person and see if that person is good enough for us. Not just throw our standards out the window for some cute guy. We have to actually see if this person has a good character, if they’re going to protect us, if we have the same views, and more. Your “person” that is for you, will have these standards, but a random hobo off the street will not. That is why we crave love and companionship.