Love Hard and Finding Love By Showing Your True Self
The moral case for being open about your flaws with your potential partner.
Finding someone to love is an incredibly difficult thing.
We want to believe that it's incredibly simple. That people will see us for who we are and love us for it. The longer the process of searching goes on however, it's harder to know when or who that person will end up being. With so many opportunities and ideas out there for how to find them, navigating it all can be incredibly frustrating. Especially when you actually meet that person in real life. So much of the dating world is constructed around the idea of putting the best version of yourself forward. To showcase what makes you worthy of other people's time. If you don't, other people will and they will get the benefits of doing so whereas you're left out.
Previously in this space, we've looked at the ideas we have about other people when it comes to love, and how this idea has evolved over time. But what we haven't looked at is the way in which we construct ourselves to look our best. How we hide our own flaws in the hopes that people won't see them in us. Our hope in doing so is that a relationship built upon our best qualities will give the person enough of a reason to hang around and get to know us on a deeper level. See what a great person we are and fall in love with that.
Naturally, what we fail to see in this strategy is that often the deeper level we want to get to reveals the flaws and the inconsistencies in ourselves. It makes us in many ways less desirable when those things end up coming out. Or so we like to believe. If we didn't believe it, we wouldn't be trying so hard to hide them from others. Those parts of us are still there however, and once you reveal them to others, that's when you really see whether or not this person is worthy of the time and energy you've put into them. Warts and all as the saying goes.
Love Hard is very much about what happens when the warts are revealed. When you can no longer hide behind the idealized version of yourself that you've constructed. Natalie, as played by Nina Dobrev, and Josh, played by Jimmy O. Yang, have constructed idealized versions of themselves to the other person. Building a relationship around aspects of themselves which make them look worthy of someone else's time.
But eventually, you have to reveal those other parts of yourself to someone. The ones you don't necessarily like about yourself and are worried about other people seeing. It's in doing so that Natalie and Josh learn the flaw in the need to look their best to someone else. Not to mention that despite these obvious problems they have, both of them are worthy of the time and energy they've invested into each other.
Which makes them better people and ultimately better for each other.
Do yourself a favour and find a way to show your true self to someone else by checking out Love Hard on Netflix.
i haven't seen the show, but this is a really insightful observation about relationships in general. presenting only one side of ourselves--the best side--is ultimately a little dishonest, and is setting both parties up for disappointment when our flaws inevitably emerge. but it's what we do when we're seeking admiration. however, sometimes it's our flaws that make us most worthy of compassion.