Do you love your partner or do you love “love”?

Love is a four-letter word we have all been obsessed with at one point of our life or another. Whether it's literature, music, movie, drama or real life – love is a ruler which reigns supreme. Having consumed the deeply unrealistic portrayals of romance in pop culture, we all thrive to believe we will love someday and we'd do it "properly".

But do we ever stop to question ourselves whether we actually love our partner or, just the concept of what we think love is?

The addiction towards romance starts from adolescence. We're all longing to find our significant other to get to love them, go on dates, post pictures, and do all of the things we see couples around us do. And while we do actually find someone and do all of those things, love is much, much more than that.

Love is never not beautiful, but we fail to see the true worth of love hidden behind all the cushy cheesy narratives. Love is a box full of things we treasure. When we try picking it up, we realise that we have mistaken its weight. It's only after we've boarded the train of relationships that we realise that our journey is a far more winding road than we believed.

Young people often make the mistake of naming unanswered feelings "love", hurl themselves into relationships, and then fail to keep the bridge between them and their partner.

Usually, it starts out with those magical days when you can't stop thinking of going out with them. Everything seems perfect as the phrase "butterflies in your stomach" starts making more sense to you. Every moment you spend with your significant other feels like the most successful investment of time you could make.

Then life moves forward a little, and thoughts of time for our beloved get trapped in rusty crevices. You don't get to speak as much with them either, nor do you want to. And when you do, things you say seem like just hollow words then.

Finally, the magic starts to dissipate. Soon there's fights, misunderstandings, miscommunications, broken promises, betrayals, and eventually two broken hearts. And as natural as all of it may sound, you may have never loved them. You loved love, you loved the feeling and the romance that it warranted. But you failed to love the person.

Love isn't merely a feeling, it's a commitment. The version of love portrayed through mainstream media fails to capture what it truly stands for. Loving someone is more than just any magic you share between each other. It's finding the person, embracing them and letting them embrace you.

Love can be a compromise, an understanding between two persons, a media of communication for our inner selves. To those who chase it for the highs, love is just another drug. But love is a wish granted to those who find their worth in their partner when no one else does. Even during the toughest blizzards, it exists like a veil.

So, let's not lie to ourselves and chase only the love depicted in movies without coming to terms with our feelings. For love isn't simply an experience, it's also about whom we choose to share its beauty with and who we become for it.

Shaikh Sabik Kamal loves moonlighting as a love guru, handing out romance advice to his friends for free. Remind him to stop at sabik2005kamal4787@gmail.com