#25 What true love will teach you about you.

Chanced upon this article from my ex co-worker's facebook, not only applicable to those who are married, a good read for those in relationship too! :)

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Marriage Isn't About Your Happiness

Did you ever think someone could show you love through a bologna sandwich?

I didn’t think so either.

Until I found out that my then-boyfriend-now-husband (a poor, broke, medical school student at the time) spent close to two months eating bologna sandwiches every day in order to cut down his grocery budget to $10 a week, just so he could save up enough money to buy me an engagement ring.

The truth is, marriage will cost you.

When you think of the cost of marriage, what comes to mind?

According to recent statistics, the average couple today spends $26,444 on a wedding. That’s a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared to the real costs of marriage. Because like it or not, marriage will cost you more than money. It will cost you something great. It will cost you a price much larger than the money you spend on a ring or a wedding or a honeymoon—it will cost you yourself.

I heard a married man on TV say (regarding whether or not he was going to stay in his own marriage), “I shouldn’t be with someone if I’m not happy.” It’s an attitude many people have, and hearing it made my stomach turn.

What an accurate reflection of the self-centered society we live in, everyone believing their main goal in life is their own personal happiness. What a small and shallow way to live.

If you’re getting married with your own happiness as your main goal, you will be disappointed in a severe way.

Marriage is not about your happiness, it’s not even about you. It’s about love—which is something we choose to give time and time again. It’s about sacrifice, serving, giving, forgiving—and then doing it all over again.

No wonder we choose divorce over commitment. Because often, we’re choosing “personal happiness” over real commitment, over real love.

They say marriage teaches you more about selflessness than you ever wanted to know. I have definitely found that phrase to be true in my relationship with my husband. Because at the heart of it, real love is all about sacrifice. About the giving of yourself, in ways big and small.

It’s about offering forgiveness when you’ve been hurt.

It’s about giving your time though it’s not always convenient.

It’s about sharing your heart when you’d rather hold back.

It’s about cleaning the kitchen after a long weekend, even if it’s your least favorite job.

It’s about choosing to respond with love when you’d rather respond in anger.

It’s about offering a listening ear, when you’d rather tune out or go to bed.

It’s about putting someone else’s needs and desires before your own.

It’s about giving up that last bite of cake, just so your spouse can enjoy it.

It’s about laying down your rights, to make way for the rights of another.

The list could go on and on, but it always ends with the same formula: You before me. And we before I.

We live in a world that despises the sacrificial side of marriage and tries to wish it away. They teach to strive for power, control and the upper hand in a relationship. They tell us to do what feels right, and not to tolerate anything less. They fool us to thinking that love is about doing what makes us happy. And the second we feel less than happy, they encourage us to bail, to abandon ship and to stop investing.

But they’ve got it all wrong.

Because the more we give, the better we become. Real love is not self-seeking, and it will always cost you. It will cost your heart, your time and your money. It will cost your comfort, your rights and your pride. It will cost you to “lay down your life” for the life of another. And only those who learn to die to themselves are the ones who get to experience the resurrection power that comes with it—resurrection into real love, into real life, and into meaningful relationships.

Source: Marriage Isn't About Your Happiness

#24 What I Really Wish I Could Tell You

I wish I could tell you I am guarded because the one before you broke down all my walls and left me to deal with the ruins and I had to slowly rebuild it brick by brick. It is so hard for me to break them down again even though I really want to.  

I wish I could tell you about how he wasted my time and made me feel worthless, about the days he wasn’t there and the nights he disappeared, I wish I could tell you how weak I was with him. After that, I vowed never to feel like that again.

Source: Thought Catalog

#23 That's Okay My Dear

The fact that you’re struggling doesn’t make you a burden.
It doesn’t make you unloveable or undesirable or undeserving of care.
It doesn’t make you too much or too sensitive or too needy.
It makes you human. Everyone struggles.
Everyone has a difficult time coping, and at times, we all fall apart.
During these times, we aren’t always easy to be around — and that’s okay.
No one is easy to be around one hundred percent of the time.
Yes, you may sometimes be unpleasant or difficult.
And yes, you may sometimes do or say things that make the people around you feel helpless or sad.
But those things aren’t all of who you are and they certainly don’t discount your worth as a human being.
The truth is that you can be struggling and still be loved.
You can be difficult and still be cared for.
You can be less than perfect, and still be deserving of compassion and kindness. 

- Daniell Koepke 

Source: Tumblr 

#22 Selectively Social

Came across this article on Thought Catalog and I have to admit that most of the points below describe me very well..so true i couldn't agree more! Have a read! :)

16 Ways To Identify Someone Who Is “Selectively Social” - Tenzin Woesel

1. You are very frank and loud at home or when you are with your friends but you turn into a timid shy ball when you are with people you hardly know. 



2. You are the entertainer in your friends circle but you hate it when your friends expect you to entertain in front of a crowd of strangers. 



3. You are very close to just one or two friends among your friends circle. With the rest of the friends in your circle, you are comfortable being you but you are not too close. 

 

4. There’s an uncertainty when you agree to keep in touch with people. There are days when you want to talk to people yet there are days when you don’t want to talk to anyone.

 

5. When your friends ask you to join them for an outing, the first thing you ask is; “Who all are going?” and the answer is always, always a BIG influence on your decision. 



6. You try your best to avoid having a conversation with people and hence, you stay away as far as you can from your next door neighbor, class mates, colleagues and friends of friends.

 

7. You enjoy being alone rather than hanging out with a bunch of people… but you become one of them if you join.



8. You hate it when people comment on how boring you and your life are. When others plan for a freaking weekend partying, shopping and movies, all you look forward to is, a stay-at-home weekend, doing nothing much, but just relax, read a book, write articles and dance to the blaring music with your pajamas on. 

 

9. You cannot forgive yourself for inviting people to your home. Most of the time, you care the least about modesties but sometimes, “You can visit my place when you want to” slips off your mouth and all you do is, regret. Just regret. You will then think of every possible excuse to give when they say they are visiting you. 

 

10. You hate it when your girlfriend or boyfriend has an out-going personality and you always get tagged ‘my lifeless girlfriend/boyfriend’. And if you are a single like me, your dream partner is not somebody who gets annoyed when you make no plans for hangouts and movies but somebody who loves staying at home spending quality time with you. 



11. You love being around people you are close with but most of the time you cherish solitude. It’s not that you never want to be with people but at the same time it’s not that you want to stay alone always. Nobody can or will ever understand your behavior just as you yourself cannot.

 

12. You can stay mysteriously unplugged for weeks on end. There are days you talk to people a lot and there are days when you don’t even respond to their text messages and calls. 
 

13. You fear getting close to people. Sometimes you get along with a person very well but there comes a point where you think you are getting close to that somebody and you disconnect immediately for a long time. Getting attached to people isn’t your cup of tea.

 

14. You fancy the idea of partying with people but you don’t want to go to parties even if all the friends in your circle are going. You hate to turn down an invitation because you don’t want to upset people but your solitude weighs more than that for you. 

 

15. There’s nothing more annoying than having an out-going person as your company. They can get on your nerves, talk to you about topics you least care and will persuade you to accompany them out on days you want to stay at home doing nothing. They will keep you waiting on the way while they talk to everyone they meet. Just because they smile and talk to everyone, you are seen crystal clear as ‘the contrast’.

 

16. To those people who don’t know you; you are and will remain that ‘grumpy, rude and anti-social person’ which in reality we aren’t.

Source: Thought Catalog

#21 How would you want to be loved?

Photo taken by S.W using olympus em10

“I want someone who will treat me like their favorite book and book character.
Someone who will sit down with me over tea or coffee with a genuine desire to understand me.
Someone who will grin when they hear my name, remembering my development.
Someone who knows my story already, yet still laughs when I retell it for the 3rd time, and cries at the painful parts even though the pain isn’t their own.
I want someone who will bookmark my dreams and make sure I get to them, one page of life at a time.
Someone who won’t just exchange me for a less damaged version when they notice the cracks in the binding, like my fake smile.
Someone who helps recover the lost pages of my heart that were torn out after my last attempts to love somebody.
Someone who isn’t content with me being alone, and longs for a sequel with them by my side.
I guess at the heart of it all, I want someone that will treat me like something worth salvaging.
I want someone that will help me believe that I am.”   

-- maxwelldpoetry, “How would you want to be loved?” 

#20 Someday

“I think that when enough time has passed, when you’ve survived that which you didn’t imagine you could, there’s a dignity in that. Something you can own. A pride in knowing the pain made you stronger. The pain made you fight to succeed. Someday, when I’m living my dreams, I’m going to think of all the things that broke my heart and I’m going to be thankful for them.”

-Mia Sheridan

#19 Unknown homesick

We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. 

Source: Tumblr

#18 Take a breath

Breathe enough to accept the air unfiltered,

I don’t care what season it is,

experience the ability to live with consequences you may never understand;

caution can be the worst poison. 

- Rakishi cir. 1952.

#17 Untold

She longed to know what at that moment was passing in his mind; in what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything, she was still dear to him. 

source: Tumblr

#16 Apologize

If I am ignoring you, I apologize. I become distracted and will focus on one thing a while. Sometimes I’m just emotionally overwhelmed and I have to lay down for a while. I’m not ignoring you because it’s you it’s because life is distracting and hard and so sometimes I just need to stop talking to people and sometimes I do that suddenly.

source: Tumblr 

#15 Sometimes

Sometimes you want to say something, but you didn't.
Sometimes you wish you could tell someone the truth, but you can't.
Sometimes you want to be open to someone, but you didn't.
Sometimes you wish that you can forget certain memories, but you can't.  

Sometimes, it's better not to know.

#14 What People Do When They Don’t Really Love You

You do not need somebody else’s love to be whole. You do not need their permission to go on with your life. What you do need is your own love. You need to let yourself go on. Their love isn’t stopping you, because that love doesn’t exist. It is only you who is holding onto what you believe should be. And what you will realize, sooner or later, is that most of your life is defined and chosen by what you compel yourself to believe should or shouldn’t be. Release yourself from the cage you built. You hold the key to your own freedom. 

Full Text: Thought Catalog

#13 Tell me.

What's left to say when every words been spoken?
What's left to see when our eyes won't open?
What's left to do when we've lost all hope?
What's left to broke when our heart's are broken? 

Text source: Tumblr

#12 Strength in love

And if, by chance, that special place

That you've been dreaming of

Leads you to a lonely place

Find your strength in love

#11 Let it go

Sometimes love just isn't enough. sometimes we have to let go of something that once meant the world to us. not because we want to. but because we have to. but life will keep going with or without them. life doesn't stop for you, or for anyone else. life is life. it’s hard, but there are those amazing moments that make you who you are. don’t sit around crying when you let someone go. someday you’ll be okay again. promise.

Text source: Tumblr

I know I have to let it go, but sometimes it's really not that easy. 

#10 x

Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.

Text source: Tumblr

#9 Don't be afraid to make mistakes

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

-Neil Gaiman

#8 Silence

“Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?”

-Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

#7 Fit In

I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don’t find funny, saying things I don’t really mean - because at the end of the day that’s what we’re all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately trying to pretend we’re all the same.

-Tabitha Suzuma 

#6 3.34am

Someone once told me that human beings have three dimensions: how you see yourself, how others see you, and how you want others to see you. The closer the distance between the three dimensions, the more at peace you are and the more stable you become.

-Marwa Rakha (The Poison Tree)