When you meet someone special and things start to click, you eventually start asking yourself questions pertaining to love. For some of us, you find yourself in love with them, or starting to fall in love with them.
When we are falling in love we start to idolize this person. In our mind, we see them as perfect, and we ask ourselves, ‘why would this perfect person love me?’ This brings about questions in yourself about your own insecurities. If the person that we are falling in love is perfect, why would they love anything that is imperfect?
As we continue to fall in love, we may evaluate our imperfections and inevitably find ones in our significant other as well. A healthy compromise will lead to the age old truth that nobody is perfect. Amen. But, does this mean that our insecurities begin to fade? If only it were that simple.
Insecurities stem from a time that is not the present. A friend once told me that she truly believes we mature in to people that are little more than our “middle school selves”. Hell, if that’s true, then what has all this self-exploration been good for in the 12 or so years since that time? I think what she was trying to say is that our insecurities never leave us. Let’s face it, middle school was hell. Our peers (self included) are ruthless, snarky children with little to no regard for other people’s feelings. We’re all guilty at some point for being Mr. or Mrs. Cranky-Pants in middle school. We didn’t have the wisdom or brain-power to relate yet. We are driving forward with such speed and hormonal recklessness that all we know is what we want and what we don’t have, or what we look like, and who we don’t look like; what we wish we could do, and what we don’t think we can achieve.
Perhaps these are insecurities that never leave us. We grow for years and years after this time in middle school purgatory, but we don’t really let our guard down again until we have reached a truly comfortable and safe place. That place presents itself when we fall in love. While we’re in the process of falling in love, we marvel at the perfect creature that dares to love us back. As long as we idolize; as long as we love, we continue to feel feelings of insecurity throughout our lives. These feelings will put themselves in to perspective as time goes on; as we value the imperfections over the false perfections. But we all know that our middle-school self lurks within us, or insecurities reside. So, the question remains…Do we ever really stop falling in love?