why love is hard

romantic relationships are one of the toughest things to figure out as a human:

- u get very few of them to "practice" with. most people will not have more than 4 serious relationships before marriage.
- there's massive qualitative differences at later levels of time spent and greater investment. having been in five 6-month relationships will tell u nothing about what a 3 year relationship where u live together is like. u can't "practice" that without *doing* it, and fucking up that level of investment is catastrophic
- each relationship with someone new is fundamentally different from all prior ones in important ways. the issues and conflicts u have, the qualities u bring out in each other, the shape of ur life, will be different each time. meaning technique, patterns, emotional expectations, just don't generalize in nice ways.
- nobody else is really able to give u great advice on what u should do. sure ur friends and ur mom can help u avoid obvious pitfalls, but at the end of the day they're not u, so their understanding of how they do well in relationships will frequently diverge from what u want and need
- ur examples are fucked. many people's parents actually have terrible relationships, or at least terrible in some specific ways. great relationships are rare and bad patterns get imprinted on kids early
- relationship damage can accumulate, just like any other kind of trauma. there's a reason why people talk about "being damaged". relationships have huge deep emotional impacts, so when they go wrong they can instill issues that cause future relationships to go wrong, rather than just teach lessons about what not to do.

so yeah, shits fucking HARD. don't beat urself up.

nevertheless, love is the most important thing, so we must try. and miraculously, despite how insanely difficult it seems, we so frequently succeed. eventually.