Why do I love, love so much? Plainly put, Divine Love saved me from the dark hole that became my life. The journey was long, and difficult but worth it. Along with freedom, self-love, and a handle on my mental health, Divine Love offered me a new perspective on romantic love. Where I once built my beliefs of romantic love on learned behaviors and pop culture, I’m now operating from a fresh view–one that deviates from the status quo.

I recently convinced my CWM (Cute White Man) to read Get a Life, Chloe Brown. He hated it because he thought it was unrealistic. Saccharine, he called it, lol. I knew he’d hate it but I wanted him to read it because it shows (saccharine or not) that love isn’t some horrible thing. He comes from the camp that love is painful and rarely lasts. Meanwhile, I believe love is constant and how we choose to engage with it determines whether it lasts between two people. But I didn’t always feel this way; in fact, like him, I thought love only came with pain.

I didn’t have an ideal relationship with my father; I crushed on boys who didn’t like me back. I always felt as if I was an inconvenience or in the way. I thought I had to earn romantic love through paying a pain-tax. Thing is–I was willing to pay this tax because I thought once I got it, all of my problems would be solved. The dark hole in my heart would be filled and I’d live happily ever after. What I failed to see was that looking for someone else to fill that hole kept me in a cycle of attracting painful experiences. I assumed love was painful because I was always in fucking pain.

When Divine Love showed up in my life I was immediately suspicious. Why wasn’t it asking anything from me? Why wasn’t it demanding perfection? Why didn’t it judge me as harshly as I judged myself? Divine Love accepted me for who I was, no questions asked. It made me very, very uncomfortable. How could something love me without causing pain? How could it love me in my darkness? It’s funny, when something easy shows up, we immediately deem it too good to be true and dismiss it as a scam. That’s how I treated Divine Love–it must’ve been a scam because I saw myself as a piece of shit unworthy of love so where did it get off saying I was lovable?

No matter how much I tried to ignore it, Divine Love wouldn’t leave, so after a while, I engaged with it. Slowly, I let it into my heartspace. And from there, it began to heal my wounds. Divine Love didn’t cause pain; it healed pain that already existed. Through creating a safe space, it uprooted old hurts, mindsets and beliefs about myself that had to be released. I could no longer see myself as fat, ugly, and unlovable. Divine Love wouldn’t let me. It insisted that I saw the truth about myself; seeing the truth meant I had to let go of my distorted self-image and limited beliefs on love. It gently encouraged me to drop my defense mechanisms–the ways I’d try to protect myself from hurt and pain. It asked me to open up and be vulnerable–to be honest–to share my deepest fears and disappointments. It asked me to forgive myself, others, and my past. It nudged me towards trust–trust in its inherent power and in myself. It never talked down to me, or told me I was worthless. It didn’t get frustrated with me or lash out in annoyance. It taught me how to love myself without demands or conditions. As I moved in this deeper understanding of Divine Love, my views on romantic love shifted as well.

Romantic love has been packaged and sold to us (through media and learned experience) as painful but totally worth it. We’ve come to believe that people must change to be with us, or that we must change. We’ve been taught that if someone doesn’t meet our conditions, we should withhold our love until they earn it back, or vice versa. I’m speaking about the ways in which we show up as wounded versions of ourselves, demanding that we heal each other’s hurts. We’ve been taught that we have to battle through, but never address our wounding in order to arrive at the promised land of romantic bliss. When in reality, we’ll never get there until we take time to accept Divine Love and its healing so we can offer it to ourselves and others. 

It’s a romantic love remix, Feat. Divine Love.

I saw a post on Instagram that said: “If you want to be happy, love them for who they are. If you want to be frustrated, love them for who you hope they’ll become.” That quote invites us to accept people for who they are in the here and now. To show compassion. To not abandon them at the first disagreement or display of insecurity. It invites us to show up patient. Nurturing. Open and willing. It asks us to be so full of Divine Love that we have more than enough to give away.

It may sound saccharine and unrealistic but I believe romantic love can be a wondrous adventure of connection, exploration and intimacy. With Divine Love at the helm, it has the possibility to heal pain instead of reflect it. Think about it: what would our interpersonal relationships look like if we show up vulnerable and compassionate instead of defensive and suspicious? What would romance look like if we accept and love people for who they are? It may buck the status quo but I encourage us to consider remixing romantic love, so that it can bring us into a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.

All my love,

Chantell Monique

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