“Perhaps the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving” – Warsan Shire

I love stupid. It’s the way I’m programmed, the way my heart is built. When I love someone, I love them with all that I have, with everything. I’m the kind of person who puts them first all the time. Yes, all the time. I would sacrifice my comfort for them, go the extra 100 miles to make them happy, do everything I can to make them feel appreciated, make excuses and make up for their shortcomings. Yes, I’m crazy like that. And this is probably why I get my heart super broken. Because I love without inhibition, without conditions. And the truth is, not everyone (most everyone) understands or appreciates this kind of love.

Every time I fall into a new relationship (and they’re not that often, because I’m a long term kind of girl), my best friend warns me to keep a little of myself, to hold something back so that I don’t get hurt. I always argue that I can’t. That it’s not me. My logic? You can’t love someone, truly love someone if you don’t bare yourself, if you don’t give 100%. And it’s not fair to hold back from someone that you love. To love, to truly love someone, is to trust that person not to hurt you; to trust that person not to use your vulnerabilities against you; to trust that no matter what, that person will always have your back, will always be in your corner (a guy I used to love always said that to me); to trust that if he/she is faced with those kinds of situations where you go out on a limb for them, that they would do the same for you.

Sadly, that’s not always the case. And to be honest, I don’t know a lot of people that have found this kind of love, this love that is so completely reciprocal. But even with this knowledge, I still go and always love stupid. Crazy stupid. Is this a bad thing? I think not.

The problem isn’t about loving crazy stupid, like the quote at the beginning of this post says. No, the problem is about the people that you’re loving. Love should be intense – it’s from that intensity that you are motivated to make all the sacrifices required. Love should be crazy – it’s the crazy that blinds you to feeling self-conscious about showing your feelings (PDA, phone calls and texts by the minute, the beaming smile when you see that special someone, e.t.c). Love should be stupid – it can’t be love if it can be calculative/calculated. No one who is truly in love should be consciously tracking where and what their SO is and is up to; because if you love stupid, you trust.

So, if the problem is the quality of the people you are loving, can you decide who you love? Can you choose a good quality person to love? Someone that understands the reciprocal and unselfish nature of love? Someone who won’t take you for granted? Someone who will respect you and your individuality, who will respect your position in their life and who will do everything to make you see and feel that you are loved? I wish I could say yes. But the answer is no – No, you cannot decide who you love. And this point is debateable because I know there’s a school of thought that argues that you can decide who you love. But you can decide to leave a person who doesn’t love you.

A good quality person is not immediately identifiable. It’s not written on the face when you meet them. It’s not in the first few words they speak. And it’s not in the first few acts that they perform. You get to know a good quality person as time goes on. The problem is that you might already fall in love with them before they start to show their true colours. And if you’re like me, and you love crazy stupid, you’ll fight to make it work, because it’s something you believe in, it’s something you think is worth it. It might mean banging your head on a brick wall till it bleeds, but you’ll do it anyway, in the hopes that it will get better, or that things will go back to the way they were in the beginning – those sweet, deceptive beginnings.

For people like us, it takes a while for us to see the handwriting on the wall; and even when we see it, it takes a while for us to react to it. I call us ‘Die-hard lovers’. We are the super heroes of love. We don’t run off at the first sign of trouble. We don’t keep our options open. We go all in and we stay there. We are focused – our minds and hearts are one track. When things go awry, we try to fix. We focus on the fact that things can be good, because we know things can be good. Our love is not kele-kele. It’s the real deal. It’s palpable – anyone who sees us knows we’re in love. It’s paramount – that person that we love always always comes first and everybody knows it, and they don’t joke with it. It’s crazy – we can get on a plane and fly to the ends of the earth to meet that person if it’s required. It’s stupid – we often overlook any signs that are indicative of trouble until the trouble comes to bite us in the arse.

But this is the kind of love that is most enjoyable, most rewarding. Crazy stupid love is liberating – you have the freedom to feel! They say that feelings of love and attraction come from/are linked to the same parts of the brain as addiction. And you know how addictions are. You can’t do without them, whether it’s a bottle of coke, or a cigarette, or doughnuts (my sister’s fave), you just have to have them. Now, tell me how you can enjoy this happy feeling if you keep trying to hold back. It’s like trying to quit smoking – it makes you extremely uncomfortable and sometimes unhappy; or like seeing a bottle of chilled coke (if you’re a coke addict) and trying to ignore it because you’re worried about sugar and calorific content. It just takes all the fun out of it.

Why don’t you just love? Especially if that’s what will make you happy. You’re afraid of getting hurt? Newsflash! Getting hurt is a part of life. You can’t avoid it forever. I like to look on my past relationships as lessons in life and love (this is long after I’ve cried my eyes out and cursed the bastard out. Yeah, I’m only human). I take learning from the things that worked and the things that didn’t and I try to improve on them when I go into my next relationship. It doesn’t mean that the next relationship will be perfect, but at least it will be better. I never ever look on how much I loved the person as the problem. In my opinion, you can never love a person too much. Rather, it’s that person who just didn’t love you enough. Not because you’re unworthy of the love, but because they just didn’t know how. Always remember this.

So, are you in a relationship now, or between relationships and getting ready for the next one? Believe me when I say it will be so much sweeter if you love them Crazy Stupid. Life is a game of chance; if you can’t predict what happens in life, why would you try to decide what happens in love? Be a super hero of love and love the way love wants to be. And if you get hurt, well you won’t die (you know you won’t).

Peace and Love…