“It’s not about giving up on the fairy tale relationship. It’s about landing it in reality. It’s about giving the fairy feet. It’s about peeling away the prince’s armor and loving the human down below. It’s about wiping off the princesses make-up and loving her divine humanness. It’s about finding romance in the naked fires of daily life. When our masks and disguises fall away, real love can reveal itself. Forget fairy tales—the human tale is so much more satisfying. We just have to learn how to get turned on by humanness.” ~ Jeff Brown

At some point we have to make the choice to shatter the goddamn glass slipper—and instead run barefoot into the reality of love.

To give up the fairytale isn’t to throw love out the window all together—but it is about giving up the artificially sweetened version that is doused in sunshine and rainbows.

The truth is, real love creates more goddamn storms than rainbows.

We love not because it’s easy, nor do we love because we are required to, by some predestined sign from the universe.

Ultimately we choose to love and we are continually faced with the choice to love through the bad times or not.

Because that is the one guarantee about love—we all will want to bail at some point.

Not because we don’t love someone but because life is hard, and sometimes it’s easier to run away from the person who wants to be there for us rather than stay, sit down and figure our sh*t out, together.

The truth is, no matter how much we love someone we can’t rescue them from themselves.

And no matter how beautiful love can be, the reality is, most of the time it’s just plain dirty.

It’s difficult for us to break up with the fantasy and make the choice to fall in love with the reality.

Some of us may never.

Yet, it seems that regardless of where we are on our journey, we all yearn for that deep connection.

We crave someone who we can be ourselves with, but as in all matters of the heart, it’s never that simple.

Love isn’t only friendship and snuggles on the couch—no matter what people say.

True passion doesn’t ever die, but it’s also only one piece of the puzzle.

Messy dirty love is picking up milk on the way home—it’s bringing a cool wash cloth and bucket to our lover in the middle of the night when they are sick.

It’s meeting them in their morning shower, to give them a smile to last the whole day through.

It’s being never too old to go parking or ever too mature to surprise our lover with oral sex while they are driving.

The truth is, great passionate once-in-a-lifetime kind of love does exist, but it’s no fairytale.

It’s the decision to love someone, not for who we want them to be, but for every messy f*ckin’ detail that they are.

This love knows that our lover is far from perfect and that they will mess up and hurt us at some point, but it also knows that we will continually make the choice to love them anyway.

While fairytales are amazing, they always have an ending.

And real messy, forgiving, true love—well, that is the sh*t that doesn’t ever go away.

Sometimes we get caught up in categorizing our love.

Sometimes the puzzle almost fits, or maybe we just force that one corner piece in until it looks like it does—and maybe sometimes we have those puzzles that seem impossible, yet always come together so easily.

The point is—having the whole damn puzzle fit, is in fact possible.

Because even though fairytales don’t exist, we still can have it all.

We can have someone who we can laugh with, discuss the universe with, to comfort us after a long day or when we are sick—and also have that soul shaking burning passionate desire with.

The truth is, love is only as great as the love that we choose to accept or believe.

It’s not found within glass slippers and dresses made from organza and fine silk.

It’s discovered in the tears and grit—the courage to fight for what our heart believes.

Sometimes we are tested to see how much we actually want something—and sometimes, the test is to see just how easy we walk away from it.

Because that is the thing about love—even though it isn’t a fairytale, we all are capable of running away from it at the stroke of midnight.

We can try to run away, back to our small lives—we can wait for our silk to turn to rags and our carriage to turn back into a pumpkin.

But at the end of the day, the one thing we can’t ever escape from is love.

First though, we have to see it for what it really is—warts and all.

When our hearts truly belong to another, it’s not the physical characteristics we can describe—but it’s in the spark in their eyes, the curve of their smile, the scent of their neck—and how we feel when we are around them.

Because the greatest love is also the most real.

Love is the one thing that makes us all feel just a little more alive when we are surrounded by it.

A love that, despite everything, makes us believe in the fairytale.

One that makes us believe that anything is possible—even happily ever after.

~

Relephant:

The 11th Step to Fairy Tale Love is Key.

Author: Kate Rose

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: elephant journal