12 Things To Stop Apologizing For In Your Love Life

1. For feeling like a big ball of insecurity about everything. 

That’s normal. You’re normal. At the heart of it, we’re all just trying to connect. We want it so desperately, we need it to survive, and when movies and books and television shows make us feel like there’s only one, specific, right way to do it, it’s hard not to get in your own head.

2. For wanting love.

You can be strong and independent and successful and happy with your single life and still really want to meet someone who you can share it all with.

3. For needing to talk about your feelings.

That’s one of the best parts about being with the (right) someone. They’re your partner and teammate and counselor and supporter and encourager all in one. You shouldn’t be with someone who makes you feel like your emotions are a burden on them.

4. For being scared.

Love has the ability to make us experience something so wonderful that it feels almost mystical, but it also has the ability to shatter our hearts into a million pieces.

5. For sometimes not knowing how to give your whole self to a relationship while also maintaining your own strong sense of self.

None of us know how to do that perfectly. It’s hard. It’s truly one of the hardest things about love.

6. For not knowing exactly what you want yet.

Spending the rest of your life with someone (if you’re even sure you want to) means a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifice, and a lot of difficult choices. The fact that you want to take it really seriously, and that you’re focused on really understanding what you want and need in a partner, is a good thing.

7. For wanting to know right away how serious someone is looking to be.

If you are at a point in your life where you’re ready to meet someone who’s serious about finding a life partner, you have every right to know if that’s what your date is looking for too. Because if they’re not, why should you have to waste your time?

8. For being unapologetically yourself.

Why would you want someone to fall in love with a version of you that isn’t you?

9. For worrying that you’ll never find someone, and being scared by the idea.

A lot of people’s first instinct is to say “You don’t need someone else to make you happy! You can find happiness all on your own!” That’s very true, and I honestly believe that you have to learn to love yourself before you can wholly love someone else. But that doesn’t mean that you must be okay with, or indifferent to, the idea that you’ll end up alone; you are allowed to be scared by that. You are allowed to not want that to happen.

10. For expecting to be treated the right way. 

With respect, and support, and love, and loyalty. You 100% deserve to expect that, and you should.

11. For thinking you’re doing it wrong. 

There’s no right way to do love, but we’re all certainly made to feel like there are a thousand wrong ways to do it.

12. For being vulnerable.

Without vulnerability, love does not exist.