A while ago, I reconnected with an old friend on Facebook. We were house-mates in my younger days but lost touch some years ago. This particular friend has the dubious honour of introducing me to one of his friends, who turned out to be my ‘first love’. And, oh how I loved him! He was straight out of a romance novel, tall, dark and handsome in that brooding sort of way that dreams are made of. Well, it was sort of out of a romance novel, except for the not so happy ending! He dumped me. I was heartbroken.

Of course that was many years ago and I now have very fond memories of a lovely time of my life and a man who was and always will be my first love. A few years later I met my husband and have been very fortunate to have experienced the joys of both a first love and a true love.

What I learned over the last 20 odd years is that, while love may be blind initially, it comes with a raw honesty that neither fairy tales, nor romance novels prepare you for. Relationships are in constant flux, we grow and change, experience good patches and bad patches and all sorts of in-between times. But at the heart of love, I discovered a level of kindness and acceptance that has astounded me.

The other night my husband was delightedly chomping on an ice lollie. By the third one I grumbled that if he made that slurping noise one more time, I was going to have to hurt him. He looked at me. I looked at him. And that was that. You see, love has a way of understanding, and he understood. Was I having a bad day? Possibly. Hormonal? Probably.

To really truly love and be loved requires acceptance of both ourselves and others. We are flawed and fragmented beings. Our best efforts often fail dismally, our unrealistic expectations break our hearts and hurt other people, and disappointment suffocates our exuberant spirit. But only if we allow it.

If we choose, instead, to be kind, to show compassion to our own failings, we automatically become kinder and more accepting of others. Love doesn’t need perfection to thrive, it needs a willingness to show up and face the honest, awful, glorious truth.

We are a mess, life hurts and some people do really horrible things. Sometimes, we are that someone. To be loved means learning to love ourselves for all of who we are. Only then can we begin to understand what it means to truly love someone else, warts, or in my case, slurping and all!