therealkatiewest:

So, the other day, a girl I really like told me some guy broke up with her because he said their love felt like they were “pretending”. And I said, “Of course it does! All love is pretending!” And she said, “Exactly! I KNOW!”

You think it’s real to write love notes and leave them in your girlfriends’ pockets so she can find them when she searches for change to buy a coffee? No, buying the coffee is real, finding those notes is when she pretends to love you. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I don’t mean it’s not real, I mean, it’s like playing pretend. We play at love and have fun trying to make it fit with how we always imagined it. Or we should. Have fun falling in love.

Because that’s the thing, no one really knows what it’s supposed to be like, so we pretend we do. We pretend to be shy when they look into our eyes for too long. We pretend to make a fuss over making them breakfast in the morning. We pretend to feel a deep connection when we press our palms together. We pretend like we could lie here, in this bed, all tangled up, just like this, forever. We pretend that this time is different than all that came before and we are right, but it’s also still the same. And we are still fooling ourselves to believe it’s entirely different from how other people experience this love-pretending.

This is all making it sound like I am a bit cynical when it comes to love, but that’s not what I’m intending. I love falling in love. I love doing all that love-pretending stuff like mailing love letters, baking cookies, sending dirty texts at inappropriate moments, memorizing someone’s face with my fingertips. Because instead of waiting around for some sort of ‘real love’, I would gladly fail a thousand times over with love-pretending, because that is real love.

Very insightful and educational.