There Are 3 Types Of Love You Will Have In Your Lifetime

There is a belief that we only fall in love with 3 people in our lives, and each one has a very specific purpose. Each one serves a different purpose in our lives, but they are all equally as important as the other.

1. The Fairy Tale Love

We grew up watching this type of love on movie screens, in TV shows, and hearing bedtime stories of the prince and the princess who had that “happily ever after” ending. It’s the love we all aspired to have and assumed would be easy to find.

It’s the starry-eyed love, usually happens when we are young, most likely in high school. We go into it thinking that this will be our one and only love and who cares if it doesn’t feel quite right? Who cares if we find ourselves having to swallow personal truths to make it work? You’re both pretending to be something or someone you’re not. Deep down we believe this is what love is supposed to be.

We hold the opinions and views of others above our own wants and needs. Because how others view us is more important than how we actually feel.

It’s a love that looks right, on paper and to the rest of society – but not so deep down, when you lie alone with your thoughts, you know it doesn’t feel right.

2. The Hard Love

Deep breaths… We all know exactly which one this is without me saying anything else. This is the kind of love that hurts. The kind of love that brings you to your breaking point over and over and eventually brings you to your knees, sobbing alone wondering where it all went wrong, or if it was ever right. It hurts because it’s all lies, pain, and manipulation… This relationship teaches us lessons about who we are as a person, but mostly it teaches us what we don’t want in life and in relationships.

We think our choices are different from the ones we made with our first love, but really, we are still making choices solely for the need to learn lessons. But we’re hooked, whether we want to be addicted or not. This love becomes a cycle, constantly repeating over and over because we think that somehow the ending will be different than before. Yet, each time we give it a go, it somehow ends worse than before.

It’s destructive, unstable, or self-centered even. There may be emotional, mental, or physical abuse and manipulation – but no matter what, there will always be drama. Just like your favorite movie or book, what keeps us addicted to this storyline is the drama. It’s the emotional rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows, and like a junkie trying to get their fix, you stick through the loops, the twists, the turns, and the lowest of lows with the expectation and hope of one single high.

This is the kind of love where trying to make it work becomes more important than whether it actually should.

It’s the love we wished was right, and when it doesn’t work out – because it will never work out – you feel defeated but you know it was for the best.

3. The You-Never-Saw-Coming Love

This is the love that comes out of left field when you’re looking right. It’s the one that usually looks all types of wrong yet destroys any remaining ideas we clung to about what love is supposed to be. This is the one that comes so easy it doesn’t seem possible or real for that matter. Because if things seem too good to be true, they probably are, right? So, now you’re just waiting for the part where things go wrong – but to your surprise, it’ll never come.

The connection can’t be described and it knocks us off our game because we never planned for it. Everything just seems right and you two just fit – there aren’t any expectations about how each person should be behaving, nor is there pressure to become someone other than who are already are.

We’re accepted for exactly who we are, and to be honest, it scares the living hell out of you. This kind of acceptance completely shakes you, and your every belief in love, to their very core.

It isn’t what we pictured our love life to look like, not by a long shot. But still, it manages to destroy any and all preconceived notions and shows us that love doesn’t have to be how we see and read about in movies, shows, and books in order to be true.

This is the love that keeps us on our toes and allows us to see the best version of ourselves. This is the love that everyone deserves, and hopefully, will one day find.

It’s the love that just feels right because it just is.

Maybe we don’t all get the chance to experience these loves in this lifetime, but perhaps that’s just because we aren’t ready to. Maybe the reality is we need to truly learn what love isn’t before we can grasp what it is.

Maybe we need a whole lifetime to learn each lesson, or maybe, if we’re lucky, it’ll only take a few years to figure out.

Then, of course, there’s those who may fall in love once and it somehow lasts from the time they first met, to their wedding day, to their dying breath. Or hearing about how they met, and it was “love at first sight”, it gives us hope and a certain kind of love we want for ourselves. It’s looking back on those faded and worn black and white pictures of our grandparents that leave us wondering if we really understand love at all. We call those the “lucky ones”, and perhaps they are.

But if you ask me, I think whoever makes it to their third love – no matter how long it takes – are the real lucky ones.

The ones who feel like giving up after constant heartbreak and disappointment, but yet, they don’t, they keep trying, they keep giving love “one more shot”.

When it comes to love, I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in choices.

That may not seem as romantic, although it is much more meaningful. Fate would mean that there is someone out there destined for you to meet: your perfect match. Choice means that you find someone to love on your own and you choose to stay with them even though they aren’t perfect.

We can choose to stay with our first love, the one that will make everyone else but you, happy. We can choose to stay with our second, with the notion that it’s not worth having if we don’t have to fight for it. Or we can take the leap of faith and choose to believe in our third love.

We can choose the love that feels like home, the one that builds you up, the true treasure in life. The one you can spend the rest of your days on this Earth with.

Sure, there will always be something unforgettable about our first love, and something heartbreakingly bittersweet about our second… but there’s also something pretty breathtakingly refreshing about our third.

The one you’ll never expect.

The one that shows you why it never worked out with anyone else before.

That one that your kids and grandkids will hope and want for themselves one day.

To find your final and most important love yourself and to promise to them that you will be their forever no matter what is something people take for granted these days. So, when you do find your final love and you choose each other, that will be a pretty big deal that not even fate can top.

Featured image via Hoàng Kha on Pexels