The case for wearing your heart on your sleeve

I scrolled past something on TikTok recently that stopped me in my tracks (well, it made me sit up straight on the couch and put my rosé down). A woman said something along the lines of, “If you love somebody, you have one job and one job only — to love them. You don’t need to ask to be loved back. You don’t need to put conditions on it. You just love them to best of your ability and by the law of the universe, that love has to come back to you.”

Whew!

She went on to explain that even if the love doesn’t come back from that specific person, it will come back to you in some form. I don’t think I have ever heard anything more beautiful.

I don’t take TikTok advice particularly seriously; after all it’s an entertainment app. And this was one woman’s opinion. But something about that statement rang so true for me.

I have always been a hopeless romantic. An eternal optimist. I love love. I’d ride a relationship till the wheels fell off. I believe so deeply in the good in people. I’m loyal to a fault. Even when I have a crush! So this philosophy feels natural to me, though I will admit I have gotten away from it a bit recently. I’ve gotten away from myself recently.

More disappointments. More heartbreaks. More complicated situations. They’ve piled on through the years and I’ve found myself slowly building up a wall, each brick representing another blow to the heart and it’s got me thinking, have I gotten so far away from the love inside of me that I’ve somehow fucked up the algorithm of the universe?

And what about boundaries and all those buzz words we’ve all gotten so used to hearing? I’m the first woman to set one in every area of my life, but when do boundaries become barriers? Have we become so stringent in our expectations of others that we push away partners who are genuinely good people but maybe just need a little of our compassion and understanding?

Don’t get me wrong — we need to have limits. And we certainly should not try to “save” someone or remain in an unhealthy relationship that make us miserable just because the love is there. I don’t believe in suffering through someone else’s pain and being treated poorly by a person who refuses to evolve or take accountability for their actions.

I also don’t believe in chasing a person who is clearly uninterested. But there really is something to the idea of just putting all your cards on the table and loving someone for exactly who they are. And expressing that love to them. Without games. Without ego. Because guess what? Nobody’s perfect. Not even you.

In a world where we’re told to “match their energy” when it comes to dating and relationships, here’s a novel idea: what if you created the energy you wanted to experience?

What if you set the tone in your relationships by treating that person the way you’d want to be treated?

What if you could drop your fears of being rejected and instead just fully, wholly put your best self forward?

And not in a “prove yourself” kind of way. Simply for the sake of being the loving woman you are.

Then, and only then, can you really determine if the relationship is enough for you to stay. Because now the playing field is built on your truth, not your fears.

That TikTok has not left my mind since I saw it. So, I’m going to focus on my one job and my one job only. Because you know what? We get hurt anyway when things don’t work out with someone, whether we’re loving hard or not. In fact, its my suspicion that we hurt worse when we deny the love we really feel because then we’re not only hurt when things don’t work out — we’re regretful. We think, what if I would have fought for this? What if there was something I could have said that changed everything? What if I could have been brave enough to empty my heart out? What could have happened then? Who could I have had the chance to become?