6 Cliché But True Things You Must Do To Find Love

The one thing that makes clichés so infuriating is that everybody says them and nobody listens — or maybe, nobody really understands. We know they're true, and yet there's something that prevents us from actually living them out. When we do, they go from being clichés to being important truths... and there are few more on the topic of love than are probably even bearable at this point.

Similar to how stereotypes are offensive and completely infuriating because they ultimately point to something that (tends) to be true. The one main "truth" when it comes to love and relationships, the one thing we all seem to need to be hit over the head with time and time again, is that you do need to love yourself first. You do need to chase love like the last bus after midnight. You do need to sacrifice and self-evaluate and be open and put yourself out there. These things are not annoying, overly positive ramblings, they're the simple and difficult and less-than-ideal truth about how we actually find the love we're looking for. Here are all the cliché but truth things you must do to find the love you want:

You Must Chase Your Love Like You Do Your Career

You can't chase a person like you do a job, and you can't convince them to love you the way you could convince someone you're qualified for a career. But when it comes to putting yourself in enough places at enough times, getting out there and trying, going on dates, opening yourself to who is sitting next to you in a coffee shop, you realize that potential is left and right. If you want it, you need to try for it. If you want to try for it, you need to think about it as something you actively, consciously do.

You Must Sacrifice

Everybody thinks they're going to be the exception to the rule: that it would be inconceivable for them to ever consider sacrificing any amount of time or effort or energy either in a relationship they're passionate about or a job that's purposeful and meaningful and dream-strivingly wonderful. But you will. There are only so many hours in a day and cups of coffee one can consume to keep them wired. You have to figure out what you're willing to let go of to make room in your life for something new — something that will most likely be, initially at least, pretty consuming.

You Must Have A Lot Of Love For Your Life Before You Have A Love Life

I know every one of your eyeballs just rolled back into another dimension, but you know what the funny thing about clichés is? That they tend to be... true. Very true. So true that people repeat them again and again, and so true that people have an even harder time actually acting on them. All that said — finding romantic love does not insert love into your life. Romantic love is like a great magnifying lens. Whatever love is already there will be amped up (whatever issues are already there will be too). The more you feel love for your life, the more someone else being in that life will feel wonderful. There's no way around this. Nobody can save you, or fix you, or help you, or change your feelings about yourself. They can only accompany you for the ride.

You Must Accept That Attraction And Love Do Not Exist On A Definitive Scale

You are not better or worse than an ex, in an inconceivably infinite number of categories to which you can pin yourself against someone else. You are not only as attractive as you are more or less attractive than someone else. You're not unlovable and ugly and weird and gross because one person doesn't quite feel like you're The Person for them. It's a redirect to the person who will. There's no definitive scale for attractiveness because there are no two people who are attracted to the same exact thing. It's why you must be yourself, and find someone who's drawn to that person, not the person you think will make you infallibly appealing to everyone you can fathom.

You Must Let Go Of The Concept Of Having A "Type"

Even if you can correctly identify patterns in which you date or find people appealing, that does not mean that the love of your life will bust through them all and in all their shining glimmering loving sexy glory be greater than your flimsy little ego-centered closed-minded idea of a "type" would ever allow. The very concept does not much more than just close you off to real love, because real love does not come in one specific package, and it almost never comes in the package you'd predict.

You Must Realize That The Path To Your Self-Love And Happiness Is Where You'll Find What — And Who — You Are Looking For

The importance of following your heart and creating the life you want and searching for your own path is that if there's any chance of you meeting the love of your life, it will be on the path parallel to your own. If you don't find yourself, you can never find them. If you don't know who you are, you'll never know who they are, even if they were right in front of you all along.

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