I have recently been obsessed with Monet McMichael and her relationship with Jalen Noble because I feel like this is one of the healthiest relationships I have seen on social media ever in my life. And I watched a podcast episode that Jalen was a guest in called The Man Enough Podcast: Finding Love Within: Jalen Noble’s Story of Healing, Love, and Second Chances. After listening to this podcast episode it reminded me of a conversation I had with a woman that I looked up to. She has been married for a while now(I think 8 years) and has two children with her husband. She told me that she knew within 3 months of being with her now husband that she would marry him one day. I was shocked. Everything I had ever known was that it takes being with someone for years before knowing that’s going to work out in a marriage and that those years together were never wasted because how could you know before then. Now I will say, this is a situation where they were not friends before and he asked her out(it was not a friend-to-lovers arch which I think is totally different). So between these two conversations essentially, I have been rethinking what love is. Especially in the sense of the three loves I was taught exist your first love, the love of your life, and your soulmate.

I am now rethinking this. And I now think that these three loves can show up in your life in different ways. I feel like the word love in our society puts a lot of emphasis on romantic love when really there are tons of different kinds of love in the world. There is self-love, familial love, platonic love, and probably more.

For example, I think I am my own first love. Not in the sense in which I thought of it before, but in the sense that I can’t love anyone else until I love myself. My mother taught me this at a young age and I have always gone back and forth between if I do love myself or if I don’t love myself. Which I would think ultimately means I don’t love myself fully. But I feel like I do now. It’s literally taken all of my life for me to get here, but I feel confident in saying that I love myself. I love what I look like, and what I sound like, I love how I feel about myself. I love the people that I have let into my life and I love my morals and values. I love my spirituality and all of my passions. I love feeling proud of myself for accomplishing something. I love it when I say the word delulu(because it’s so cute!). I love when I am painting or building Legos. I love how I am working on being a better version of myself every single day. I love how when things get hard for me, I push through and keep thinking about how much better life is when I take care of myself. I love all of my delusions because even though I am in therapy, I still have quite a few of them. But I can recognize that they are delusions. Which makes it semi-more healthy(I think). And there are so many more things that I love about myself. I also think it is important for me to note that even though I have been on dating apps and a date(singular) I have never been ready to be in a relationship and emotionally and physically commit to being with someone. So as many times as I have graciously quoted the racist and misogynistic movie, Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald’s character, Samantha Baker, says “Donger’s been here five hours and he’s got somebody. I live here my entire life and I’m like a disease.”. But really I just haven’t been ready to be in a relationship, because I have spent so much of my time trying to figure out how to love myself and if I do love myself. Which I do. I can confidently say that now!

But I also think there should be more of an emphasis of plantic love in our life. And how the love of our life or maybe our soulmate is one of platonic love. I feel like I see a lot on social media about platonic soulmates, and how while they are platonic soulmates, they are also in healthy romantic relationships. Which I find to be amazing! Let’s normalize platonic love taking up a big part of our lives. When I went on my first date I saw a video on Tik Tok where a guy had said that if a guy doesn’t want to hang out with you more than once a week then he’s not into you, I was generally shocked. Who said anything about me spending more than one day a week with a guy? What about my friends or family? When am I supposed to have time for them? I could not believe it! But the more I think about it, it makes sense. I mean if you are going to marry this person then you should be gradually spending more and more time with them. Anyways, I feel like I have a lot of love in my life, in the form of friendships. I have learned a lot about myself through my friendships over the years and what I am and am not willing to put up with in someone who is supposed to have my back in life. And when I think about who I want with me throughout my life, I think of three of my closest friends. Who I know will always pick up when I call. They will always repsond to my text. They will always be there for me through everything and I know I will always cherish them in my life. They are my best friends, they are my 4lifers, they are the loves(plural) of my life. And I think the same thing can go for a soulmate. Your soulmate doesn’t have to be romantic. It can be platonic. And that’s great!

Ultimately I feel like there needs to be a normalization of two things/these are two things I am going to normalize in my life: 1. having different types of important love in my life that is not romantic. Having strong friendships throughout my marriage and life, strong ties to family, and the strongest bond with myself, because without self-love, there is no other love for me to give. And then 2. normalizing intersectionality between the different types of love. Just because my first love is myself, doesn’t mean that your first love is yourself. Just because the love(s) of my life are my friends, doesn’t mean that’s the way it is for you. There is a difference in how love will show up in all of our lives. And some people will meet someone at 5 years old and they will be their best friend and will one day marry them. Others may never have romantic love in their life. It doesn’t matter how much advice I take from other people, the love in my life will look and feel different for me. Because ultimately love is a very personal emotion that looks and feels different for everyone. It’s okay for love to show up differently for you. It’s life. It’s all going to be different for all of us.