Relationships are a constant balance between two different extremes.

On one end, we instinctually keep our hearts guarded. Giving only half of the love we have to give, we wait for the other person to prove that they won’t break our heart if we give it away. We let our history play too big a role in writing our future. We focus on all of the things that could go wrong, and it keeps us from experiencing the joy of getting to learn someone- to laugh with them, cry with them, and create new memories with them.

We shut down because…well, it’s the easier thing to do. We keep a wall up- sometimes because we don’t trust in the importance of the love we have to give. And other times, because we don’t recognize how worthy we are of being loved.

On the other end, sometimes we give too much of our selves to people who aren’t willing to be open and give just as much of themselves to us in return. We want to love them, hug them, laugh with them, and feel worthy of them. 

But if- with our hearts open and ready to love- they cannot even open their eyes to receive it, who are we to stay? Who are we to hold ourselves so low that we accept only half of a heart in return for the whole-heart we give away?

We compromise with ourselves. We tell ourselves that maybe this is as good as it gets. We forget that, while relationships require work, they should never feel like a burden. It’s a joy and an honor to love and be loved. So why make it any less than that?

I don’t know everything about love, but I do know this:

We are deserving of exactly the amount of love we are willing to give.

If you are too scared to love with all your heart- to play a really big game and constantly be willing to give more than you take in a relationship- that’s all you’ll ever get in return. It will be no surprise when the person you are with closes up, stops sharing, doubts you and themselves, feels underappreciated, and makes your closed heart their own problem.

But if you give a relationship everything you’ve got- if you risk putting your heart completely in someone else’s hands- you’ll receive a deeper, more beautiful kind of love than you could ever imagine.

In life and love, there are no guarantees. If you are waiting for one, you’ll be waiting forever. But there’s only one thing that hurts more than your heart getting torn in two- it’s the emptiness of a heart that was too afraid to let love in at all.

Be willing to get hurt. Sure, it’s a risk to give someone your whole heart. Do it anyway. And hold yourself as high as you deserve to be held- so that in those moments when you give your heart away and don’t get all of someone else’s in return, you can walk away knowing you gave it your all.

Most of all, love yourself- and trust that one day, someone will be fortunate enough to love you, too.