What They Don't Tell You About Love

As someone who has read a lot of romance novels, watched a ton of rom-com movies and has been a romance novelist, I thought I knew exactly what love would feel like. But it turns out, real love is hardly the way it is in the movies and poetries. What I could only assure you is that John Green was right when he said, "Falling in love was like falling asleep. Slowly, and then all at once."

I have always thought that love would be so intense and all-consuming, burning and intoxicating. I was taught that love would be fast heartbeats and butterflies in your stomach, and the die-for-love feeling. So when it came presented the other way around, I had a hard time realizing it at first. I thought it was an instant overwhelming feeling accompanied by hasty decisions, impulsiveness, and a life of being completely drunk in love. I thought it was supposed to happen all at once. You fall in love with a touch of a hand, there are sparks and fast heartbeats, and you just know you've found the one. But what they don't tell you in the novels and movies, is that love can also be slow. It starts small until it grows on you. It takes its time. It's not rushed. It settles in, and it stays.

Love, the one that is real, is all so foreign and natural at the same time. It was fast heartbeats but not of anxiety, but of the anticipation and excitement. Finding your soulmate feels like finding a piece of you that you never knew was missing. It was talking to someone and never getting tired of it. It's the seamless and comforting conversations that the both of you would have, and it would feel like all the time in the world would never be enough because we never run out of things to talk to.

Maybe just like in the movies, love feels like losing yourself--but not entirely. You don't lose yourself for someone. You even love yourself more because of the way they love you. When I think of romcoms and romance dramas, couples would be doing things together--completely and utterly romantic. There are public displays of affection, laughing in public places, staring at each other's eyes, forgetting the world around you, kissing, and holding hands. These all hold true in real life, just maybe not as smooth as they make it appear in the movies. It's walking together and both of you hesitating to hold each other's hand. It's going home after a date smiling because finally, you held each other's hand. It's wanting so much to kiss but it's also the shyness of being in public, so you kiss secretly, just a second so no one would see. It's being with each other and forgetting everything else. You're not even aware of it. You will just find out that you're with each other and you're not thinking of anything else---people fighting around you, the noise of passersby, the traffic, the harsh afternoon sun, your stressful job or studies, your anxieties about life---all of them, gone. It was the strange feeling of just complete happiness and nothing else.