According to one theory, we only fall in love with three people in our lifetime.
We may like many people throughout our lives, but these are the ones who leave an imprint on us, consume us, and change us. The only problem is that we often have difficulty letting go, so most of us never make it to the third one, despite the fact that it is the most important and successful type of love.
Each of these loves requires us to experience it for a different reason. But we must not be bound by them in order to experience the unlimited love that occurs the third time, if we are patient enough to wait for it. We can all choose to stay with our first love because it is comfortable and we are afraid of never finding a second or third love. But, for whatever reason, those loves will always feel as if something is missing.
About the three types of falling in love
“Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.” ~ Unknown
• Falling in Love for the First Time: The Love That Appears to Be Right
It has been said that we only fall in love three times in our lives. However, it is also believed that each of these loves is required for a different reason.
Our first is often when we are young, even in high school. It’s the kind of idealistic love that reminds us of the fairy tales we read as children.
This is the love that appeals to what we should be doing for the sake of society—and, most likely, our families. We go into it believing that this will be our only love, and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel quite right or if we have to swallow our personal truths to make it work because deep down we believe that this is what love is supposed to be.
Because how others perceive us is more important than how we feel in this type of love.
It appears to be a genuine love.
• Falling in Love for the Second Time: The Hard Love
The second is supposed to be our tough love—the kind that teaches us about who we are and how much we want or need to be loved. This is the type of love that causes pain, whether through deception, pain, or manipulation.
We believe we are making different decisions than before, but in reality, we are still making decisions in order to learn lessons—but we persist. Our second love can become a cycle, one that we often repeat because we believe the ending will be different this time. But every time we try, we end up making things worse.
It can be unhealthy, unbalanced, or even narcissistic at times. There could be emotional, mental, or even physical abuse or manipulation—and there will almost certainly be a lot of drama. This is exactly what keeps us hooked on this storyline, because it’s an emotional roller coaster of extreme highs and lows, and like a junkie looking for a fix, we stick through the lows in anticipation of the high.
With this type of love, making it work becomes more important than whether it should.
It’s the love we wished was right.
• Falling in Love for the Third & Final Time: The Love That Lasts
And the third is the unexpected love. The one who usually looks completely wrong for us and destroys any remaining ideals we have about what love is supposed to be. This is the kind of love that seems unattainable. It’s the kind of connection that defies explanation and knocks us off our feet because we weren’t expecting it.
This is the kind of love where we meet someone and it just feels right—there are no ideal expectations about how each person should act, and there is no pressure to become someone other than who we are.
We are simply accepted for who we are—and it shakes us to our core.
It’s not what we expected our love to look like, and it doesn’t follow the rules we hoped would keep it safe. However, it shatters our preconceived notions and demonstrates that love does not have to be as we imagined in order to be true.
This is the love that keeps knocking on our door, no matter how long we take to answer.
It’s the kind of love that feels right.
Perhaps we don’t all experience these loves in this lifetime, but that could be because we aren’t ready. Perhaps the reality is that we need to understand what love isn’t before we can understand what it is.
Each lesson may take a lifetime to learn, or it may only take a few years if we’re lucky.
Perhaps the question is not whether we are ever ready for love, but whether love is ready for us.
Then there are those who fall in love once and find that it lasts until their last breath. Those faded and worn pictures of our grandparents walking hand-in-hand at age 80 as they did in their wedding picture—the kind that makes us wonder if we really know how to love at all.
Someone once told me that they are the lucky ones, and they may be.
But I believe that those who make it to their third love are truly blessed.
They are the ones who are sick of trying and whose broken hearts beat in front of them, wondering if there is something fundamentally wrong with the way they love.
But there isn’t; it’s simply a matter of whether or not their partner loves in the same way they do.
Just because it has never worked before does not mean it will not work now.
What it comes down to is whether we are limited by how we love or if we love without limits. We can all choose to stay with our first love, the one who appears attractive and makes everyone else happy. We can stay with our second love because we believe that if we don’t have to fight for it, it’s not worth having—or we can choose to believe in the third love.
The love that isn’t like a storm, but rather the quiet peace of the night after.
And maybe our first love was special, and our second was heartbreakingly unique…But there’s also something quite remarkable about our third.
The one we never see coming.
The one that actually lasts.
The one that shows us why it never worked out before.
And it’s that possibility that keeps you trying again and again, because you never know when you’ll stumble into love.
“You found parts of me I didn’t know existed and in you I found a love I no longer believed was real.” ~ Unknown
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