3 of the Worst Pieces of Relationship Advice
Just because you’ve heard it many times doesn’t mean it’s good advice
For many years I believed that “the one” was out there. That I would meet someone and something magical would happen and I would feel complete. As if another person could be the chemical needed for a reaction that would transform me. My search for this person was consuming, distracting, and often, disheartening. It was exhausting and my search for completion only further disconnected me from myself.
Thanks to Melissa Febos’s words in her brilliant book, Body Work, I became conscious of a belief that had taken hold of my love life unconsciously for years:
“I worshipped people the way that others worship gods, have looked to humans and chemicals for the kind of love we can only expect from a divine source. Our culture encourages this. We think love will redeem us, and it will, but not that of any human lover and not that of any material substance.”
For Febos, she “found a church in art, a form of work that is also a form of worship—it is a means of understanding myself, all my past selves, and all of you as beloved.” That’s the thing with this bad relationship advice—it’s that it doesn’t push us to deepen our understanding of ourselves, but rather makes love into a game. A game…
