When You Are A Skeptic Who Accidentally Falls In Love

You feel like a hypocrite, because you believe that true love is a lie, but then you talk to your person about spending the rest of your lives together.

The problem is that you mean both things. You mean it when you say that love always ends, that relationships cannot last a lifetime. And you mean it when you say that you can picture spending forever with your person, that you plan on being with them until death do you part.

You feel like a lousy girlfriend/boyfriend because you were not born as a hopeless romantic. You were a skeptic for as long as you can remember. You associate love with pain and pain with love.

That is why there are times when you hesitate to tell your person about how you really feel. If you tell them that you expect the relationship to end eventually, they will be insulted. They will think that your doubts have something to do with them. That you don’t love them enough. That you don’t have enough faith in your relationship.

They will be annoyed that things didn’t click for you the second you met. They will assume that — like in a romantic comedy — your entire mindset should have changed as soon as you found them. They will think that your fears should have disappeared instantly because you are finally with the right person and with the right person everything makes sense.

But that isn’t the way things work in the real world.

You do have faith in the relationship. That is why you are still in the relationship. Most of the time, you would have left by now. You would have walked away and saved yourself the trouble.

And now, even though you are a skeptic at heart, you are willing to do things you never thought you’d do before. You look for houses together. You plan out your wedding day. You discuss baby names. You are ready to create a real future with this person.

But there’s still this nagging in the back of your mind that grows louder whenever another family member announces their divorce or another friend calls off their engagement. There is a part of you that believes love always ends in fire and flames, a part of you that believes your happiness is going to come to a halt soon.

Those thoughts used to give you comfort. They used to make you think you were doing the right thing by staying single. But now that you’re in a serious relationship, you don’t want to believe those things anymore.

You want to be the kind of person who promises forever and follows through on it. The kind of person who doesn’t have a single doubt about what their future will hold. The kind of person who enjoys a good thing while it lasts instead of looking for signs that it is all going to come crashing down around you.

You want to be a romantic, you want to be that person, but deep down you will always be a skeptic. You will always be waiting for your happily ever after to end.