the expectations of love.

Love comes with certain expectations, doesn't it?

     You want to be charished. 
                 You want to be romanced. 
                              You want to be desired. 

When you're single it's unfathomable that these expectations will not be met when you find "the one".
Here's the thing, when you're single you have these ideals about waht you think marriage and love will be like.

- You'll have many wonderful, spontaneous dates
- You have the most romantic, intimate proposal the internet has ever heard of
- You get married in the most elegent wedding dress to the man of your dreams
- You move into a beautiful starter house with your hubby; a home where you will one day raise your children

I may be no expert on love by any means, but I do know that marriage and love is nothing like that. Loving another person is hard work; it's a struggle.

In a perfect world, this is what real love looks like; the type of love we should all strive to give:

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails."

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

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I'm gonna let Hannah Wofford, guest blogger over at be.loved blog take it from here:

After reading that is doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the reason our expectations of love go unmet. Being patient and kind and trying to not be envious or boastful is hard. Honoring someone and choosing to be selfless takes sacrifice. Keeping your temper in check and not holding grudges is a struggle. In reality, we have no right to have any expectations of love because we can’t meat anyone else’s expectations.

So to all my single ladies:

I encourage you to lay down your expectations of romantic love (excluding the expectation to be respected as a woman and not abused or taken advantage of – I need to make this very clear – always expect that). Try to abandon the expectations of how you think love should go. Instead of seeking a man who fits the bill of the latest chick flick hunk, seek a man who strives to live out 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. He won’t always meet your expectations but he will try and that will mean more to you than his failures.

Happy Easter to all my fellow single gals.

xoxo