One afternoon in my second year of high school, i was ill. Ill enough to me on bed rest in the hostel while my friends were in class studying. Bored, restlesss and unable to nap, I picked up the Calhoun Sisters trilogy by Nora roberts and I was transformed. That was my frist romance novel that would see me read tons more in years to come.
My research shows that everyone learning about love from books has read Conversation on Love but I haven’t. In this article, I shall simply be discussing the various lessons I have learnt from the books I’ve read that might or might not be centered around love.
💌 2. Love Isn’t Always Loud — It’s in the Quiet
Love for most people means different things. For the longest time, I believed that love had to be expressed in the big stuff, especially in my teens. Grand gestures like a boy walking with me where everyone in school could see or declaring his admiration of me in public was the greatest expression of love in my head.
Looking back now, my view of the world was limited. The books I read where dukes emerged and aved damsels in distress acted as my guide. Those taught me that for a boy to love me, he had to slay dragons. If he announced to the ton that I was his chosen against all odds, that would be even better.
The change in view happened before I knew. I started seeing love in the little things like apologizing when I was wrong and doing tings just because. Forgiving before apologies and being kinder. My friends posting me on their stories did not matter, it was in quiet moments. Knowing I could call to rant about my day or simply exist in their presence became a revered act of love.
Real Love Requires Choice, Not Just Feeling
Tjis was a lesson I picked up after reading “You Deserve Each Other” by Sarah Hogle. I have to admit that when I picked this book up and read it the first time, I laughed at the antics of Naomi and Nick. A duo that truly deserved each other.
Reading the book the second time opened my eyes to a lot of things. One of which was that love truly and often requires you to make a choice. the choice to choose a person with all their flaws and the baggage they carry. on the days you feel so much love for them and the days you dont. Those are the days you cement your choice even.
Watchin Naomi and Nick evolve was more than eye opening. It led me to the realization that I did love a lot of people even when I didn’t feel it necessarily. And not just romance too. My siblings are a testimony to this, I often feel like throttling them on most days but i love them all the same.
Love Teaches You About Yourself, Too
I discovered recently that most of the characters I dislike are characters that refelect the parts of me I don’t like. It’s so easy to judge others for behaviours we justify in ourselves. Take for example the miscommunication trope. It annoys me so much and then in reality, I am a poor communicator on most days.
I remember reading “Love Hypothesis” by Ali Hazelwood and wanting to scream in many chapters. I wonder how I got through reading that book four times in one year. I loved Olive, i still do but a lot of her problems would have been avoided if she had just opened her mouth to say the truth so many times. It’s a thing I do, lying by omission or letting the other party believe whatever.
Reading that book brought this to my attention and I have bettered my communication over the years.
Lost Love Still Counts
Yearning, this is a feeling I know a little too well.
In Julia Quinns “When He Was WIcked”, Francesca lost her husband whom she loved very much. Her loss was so great that she could not allow herself fully entertain the idea of any other man. It was beautiful but then it was also heartbreaking because closing your heart and choosing not to open it to avoid been hurt could make you miss out on a good thing.
Love does not have to last forever for it to mean something. Loving and losing someone is not a reason to never love again; at least not for me at this pount in my life. yes, I would meet and love good people and lose them. I will also allow myself love again as many times as my heart allows it.
Platonic Love is Powerful Too
In Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, Allysa Kincaid was the realest gee. She taught me that putting my girls first is the greatest ode to our friendship. The deep connection they shared changed from viewing girl friendships as toxic to one that could build me in one way than one.
Not just girl friendships but realtionships in general. It does not have to be romantic to be deep. I would go to the ends of the earth for my friends because i love them that much. Platonic relationships have become beautiful and honest parts of my adult life, I wouldn’t trade that for anything. My friends have seen me through a lot of hard times in my life and i have seen them as well.
Stories Helped Me Unlearn the Toxic Stuff
Once an avid romance reader, I consumed almost every type of book. I knew romance tropes like the back of my hand, I might still know most of them. I glorified toxic behaviour just because the characters were pretty. I remeber rereading “Stealing Heaven” by kimberly Cates and wanting to throw Sir Aidan off a cliff. A more toxic hero i have ot seen and Norah Linton was caught trying to fix him.
I loved him in high school. WAr hero scorned by his first wife who loved his daughter ferociously, I was sold. reading it now, I realized that he was mostly a selfish and toxic person who gave a lot of excuses. i couldn’t finish the book because of how annoyed i was but, fixing another human being is no one’s job. And i think that having a saviour complex in real life is exhausting and sad for the one bearing the burden.
I no longer see red flags as a thing to yearn for. I would read the book probably but then flaws are flaws and wrong is wrong. Acharacter being soft is no reason to exploit them and cheating can never be cool. These stories caused me to reflect on what real love is and consuming books with healthy charcters healed me as well. Growth is not the same for anyone so if you enjoy reading these, good for you.
My Ongoing Love Education
Of course, I do not have all the answers. There are still so many books to read and things to learn. I am still learning to fit my expectations to reality and not the fictional love stories i read. No knight in shining armour is coming to sweep me off my feet and lure me into happy ever after.
Happy ever after is waking up every morning and deciding that the choice I make is still my choice. As much as fiction isn’t always realistic, there are elements of truth we can pick from these stories. Do you have any fictional characters that you love, please share your stories with me in the comments.
Conclusion
Love to me has come to mean more than the feeling of euphoria when my loved one simply exists. It’s when my brother grabs a coffee for me on the way to work and when a friend listens to me rant for 30 minutes. Stories have shaped a lot of my views on these moments over time.
“What have your favorite stories taught you about love?”
