When You Meet the Right Person, Love Becomes Life Itself

People often talk about the honeymoon phase as the most magical time of a relationship.

It’s when everything about your partner seems perfect and you want to spend all your free time together. After this phase, you’ll see their faults and face relationship conflicts — it’s when “real life” begins.

It sounds like common knowledge, but I find it problematic.

Believing in this concept led the younger me to think it was normal to work hard for a relationship when love cooled down instead of acknowledging that the relationship was mediocre, wrong, or even toxic for me.

In fact, experiencing the honeymoon phase might be a sign that a person lacks maturity and self-awareness. It means getting carried away based on superficial factors and entering a relationship with someone without taking time to get to know the different sides of them. That’s not a wise dating strategy.

When I met my fiance, I didn’t see him as perfect because seeing someone as perfect is not seeing them at all — it’s objectification. And, without such a so-called honeymoon phase, I knew I liked him and was in love with him for who he was. Neither he nor I am perfect, but we’re better each day for each other and so is the quality of our connection. I decided that I wanted a relationship with him.

Thanks to our relationship, I’ve learned new meanings of love.

In my reality, love doesn’t intensify and then cool down — love strengthens, deepens, and evolves over time. And it’s still the very beginning.

The love he gives me is constant.

Recently, we threw a party to celebrate our engagement with family and friends in London. Due to the pandemic, there are a few things I’ve only recently experienced with my fiance for the first time. For example, organising a big event and traveling abroad together.

Throughout these experiences, I was — time after time — amazed at the way he put me and my comfort first. Despite having a demanding job, he sorted out all the important tasks and left me with the fun, easy ones (He knows I’m not a natural planner and was also carried away with my writing, which he fully supports.)

While we were on holiday together, he made sure I was the first to get all the nice things while constantly watching out for my safety. When I mentioned one time that I wanted some mangoes, if we drove somewhere, he would ask me whether I wanted to get them or if he saw someone selling them on the way he would point it out to me while I already forgot about it. Nothing I told him slipped his mind; I could clearly see all my needs are important to him.

His care, respect, generosity, and love mean to me more than I can ever verbally express it to him.

I feel deeply moved by knowing that I’m truly the world to him.

At our engagement party, even though we had decided to wing our speeches, I still made him one because I believed he deserved it (and I’m a relationship writer after all!) I actually cried as I wrote it because I felt the weight of my words about him and our relationship. They were true —For each one of them, I could think of something that actually happened between us, a real example of how wonderful he was.

As he was listening to my speech for the first time, he was teary.

I said:

“I’m getting married to my best friend, the love of my life, and I’m a relationship writer, but you’ll be surprised to know sometimes I struggle to write about love.

Before meeting my partner, I actually found writing about love easy. And I realise that it’s because the love I knew was the love that often left me alone with my thoughts so I could muse over it and make it whatever I wanted it to be.

But the love my partner gives me is different.

The love he gives me is constant.

From the moment he entered my life, I had no doubt that he likes me, he loves me, he cares about me, and I’m the centre of his universe. He brings so many good things and people into my life.

If you ask me to write about love now, I don’t even know where to begin; I don’t even have time to think about it because I’m living in it every moment of the day.

We’ve grown so much together. He is hands down the most loving, caring, emotionally intelligent, funny, kind, smart, capable man I’m lucky to know and love, and I could go on about that list!

I thought the proposal was the height of our love, but I’m feeling more and more in love with him each day. The more time we spend together, the more I feel sure and lucky that he’s the one I’m marrying.

I realise that when you meet the right person, love is no longer just love — a feeling, an emotion, or a concept. Love is life itself. Because it’s present in every moment of the day, every interaction with each other, in good times and through hardships.

Our life has transformed into something so much more, so much bigger than the sum of its part.

So, thank you.”

When love becomes life itself, it’s an endless blessing.

Love isn’t a phase or intense longing for something I cannot have. Love doesn’t hurt.

Love is all mine, and I don’t have to wonder or worry about what comes next — I know what comes next. That’s the beauty of serious commitment.

Love is my joy, security, meaning, and purpose.

It’s not lost on me that anything can happen and people can change, but I choose to have faith as I have roots in myself. I hope that love keeps opening my eyes and shining my steps forevermore.