10 Things I Learned About Love in My 30s That I Wish I'd Known in My 20s

A relationship coach shares her journey in love

I never thought I would find love. Unconditional, real, can’t-live-without-you love. It’s ironic considering my career as a relationship coach and a matchmaker. But it’s true. I didn’t think those happily ever after stories were meant for the real world.

At least, that’s what I thought when I was younger. Now I’m older, wiser, and fortunate I've been in love several times. I'm especially grateful that I've met the love of my life. There are moments when I wake up, still in disbelief, and pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming.

However, it was a tough and winding road to get here. I wouldn’t be where I am today without integrating many lessons—some painful, all beautiful—along the way.

Here are a few things I learned about love in my 30s that I wish I’d known in my 20s.

Relationships Are Work, But It’s Good Work With The Right Person

Anyone can fall in love. I’ve learned sustaining love is much more challenging. As time passes, a relationship requires sacrifice, compromise, and negotiation. It’s a lot of work. Yet when you’re with the right person, the effort feels easy. The burden is shared because both partners are committed to honoring what’s best for the relationship and growing as individuals.

Long-lasting relationships require a starting point of shared core values and goals. This common ground allows for flexibility and adaptability, essential for navigating life’s challenges together.

I was too young to think about dating intentionally. I focused more on attraction and status instead of building real intimacy. When I dated my past exes, we put in a lot of hard work, but overcoming our underlying incompatibilities was impossible. Long-lasting relationships require a starting point of shared core values and goals. This common ground allows for flexibility and adaptability, essential for navigating life’s challenges together.

If your values are aligned with your partner, it feels easy to put in the time because you have a strong foundation. From there, you can keep building up the relationship with reciprocity, generosity, empathy, trust, safety, communication, and self-awareness. You genuinely feel you’re on the same team and you’re playing for keeps.

Boundaries Are How You Tell Other People How To Love You

In my 20s, it was very difficult to tell people my boundaries. I wanted to make my loved ones happy at the risk of burnout and exploitation. Over time, I’ve come to understand that setting boundaries is an expression of self-love. It’s about finding a protective balance around how I can love others while still loving myself.

Boundaries are a demonstration of respect for your time, personal container, and limits. Without boundaries, you can lose your sense of self. The line gets fuzzy as identities, responsibilities, and emotions messily blur together. When you're able to contain yourself and speak up, it helps you feel like a whole person so you can still feel, think, and act independently.

I used to think that boundaries created separation between the self and the other and I feared that distance. Now I value the space in between. I understand that boundaries are roadmaps for acceptable or unacceptable behaviors. Examples can be as simple as financial independence with agreed spending limits, household responsibilities with divvied chores, or a desire for personal sovereignty and time alone with friends.

These clear limits help foster healthy intimacy because your partner knows how to validate and show up for you.

Pay Attention To Who You’re Attracted To

According to one of the universal principles of the law of attraction, everyone serves as a mirror reflecting your innermost thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Expanding on that point further, research on the similarity-attraction principle shows that we tend to like what we know. Meaning, that our brains are often subconsciously wired to be drawn to what’s familiar.

I can relate. When I was younger, I didn’t date healthy people because I wasn’t healthy. I was in survival mode, riddled with insecurities and trauma responses. I fell for men who mirrored old narratives from my past that I hadn’t healed from. I sought out love that felt like home, failing to recognize my early experience of home never felt safe.

For better and worse, the people we attract tell a lot about who we are and where we are in our growth journey. When dating, see each person as a vibrational mirror and learning opportunity. If you’re attracted to someone who is causing you pain, reflect on the stories you may be repeating to break that pattern. If you’re attracted to someone healthy, reflect on the areas you’ve grown and the work you can do to continue moving in a positive direction.

Related: What Determines Sexual Attraction, Exactly?

Being Single Is Important

For half of my life, I was a serial monogamist and mostly in long-term relationships. Dating taught me a great deal about myself, but it was only when I found myself single at 30 that I began to understand who I was and what I wanted the most. I learned how to speak kindly to my inner critic and let go of what other people thought about me, kicking off the beginning of my journey with unconditional self-love.

Without external validation and another person's context, I worked on being happy with my own company and putting myself first. I lived on my terms and welcomed change that benefitted me and only me. My solitude felt precious, finite, and so pleasurable that I wanted to spend all of my time nurturing my well-being, hobbies, and community.

A study in 2017 noted that voluntary singleness improved mental health outcomes, reflecting my personal experience. I resolved to be alone until a relationship felt even more fulfilling than my single life.

The choice empowered me to let go of emotionally unavailable men because of my higher standards. It empowered me to eventually meet my boyfriend who added so much beauty to what I already had going on.  Plus, he saw my individuality as something to be respected and nurtured.

Closed Doors Put You On The Right Path

I've met several men who seemed like my perfect match. One of them was a profound listener who made me feel heard, and another flame had an irreverent, wicked sense of humor that lightened me up. When those connections didn't pan out, I felt a deep sense of loss, believing I'd never find someone uniquely like them again. And in a way, I was right.

However, I would go on to meet other people who offered similar qualities along with something even better–they were willing to work through challenges with me. They were in the right timing of their life to sustain a connection and make something work. I've learned that I can't build a life by forcing something to happen, nor do I want to change someone's fundamental nature.

I now understand that those almost-relationships served as a catalyst, pushing me to see what I valued the most—like, compassionate care and not taking myself so seriously. They didn't give me anything that I didn't have within or couldn't find again. They weren’t the ones that got away, they just weren’t meant to be in my life for a long time. Closing the door on them redirected me back to the path I was meant to be on. 

Don't Be Afraid To Feel Your Emotions

I intellectualized my emotions for a long time. I knew all of the stories behind my fear, anger, sadness, and shame and explored the origins deeply in therapy. But I didn't allow myself to feel the emotion.

Many of those raw stories were linked to my early childhood experiences. I was never taught to identify, understand, and healthily process my emotions so I detached and ignored them whenever I could. By doing that, I had no idea I was also blunting feelings of happiness, joy, and gratitude. My body grew numb to all of my emotions, missing out on the important messages my feelings were trying to tell me because of the chaos I was throwing into my mind-body-heart connection.

By dismissing my emotions and ignoring its signals, feelings remained lodged in my nervous system and I got caught up in unhealthy work situations, toxic boyfriends, and a dissociated body.

In my 30s, I'm still learning how to resource myself properly so my feelings can flow through me, providing me with critical information about my environment and the people around me. Love now feels more profound when I can put myself on the razor edge moment of the present and experience the full strength of my emotions knowing it’s a temporary moment.

By dismissing my emotions and ignoring its signals, feelings remained lodged in my nervous system and I got caught up in unhealthy work situations, toxic boyfriends, and a dissociated body.

I’ve stopped relying so heavily on outside sources for advice because I now trust my emotions to instinctively guide my intuition towards the actions that are right for me.

Embrace Heartbreak

Grief has been one of my most important teachers. Paradoxically, the emotion has taught me so much about the depths of love.

The immensity of the grief felt is proportional to the love experienced. Grief conveys the beauty of the love that was left behind. Energy cannot be destroyed, only changed. The unspent energy of love is looking for a place to go, and so love transmutes into heartbreak.

I spent the majority of my life minimizing the strength of my emotions and fearful of how overwhelming it would all feel. Looking at grief from that perspective, I wish I had known sooner that there was always beauty there in some of my most painful moments. That I could handle it. Grief was not something to shake off, but a souvenir to commemorate the past relationships and meaningful experiences that had once shaped my life.

Related: From Heartbreak to Healing: Navigating the 7 Stages of a Breakup

We Have Many Soulmates

I grew up believing in “The One” or the idea of finding that one person who would make me happy beyond my wildest dreams, fulfill all of my needs (without me even telling them what they are, they would just know!), and complete me. However, I later realized that belief was setting me up for disappointment and codependency. It’s unrealistic to expect one person to fulfill all of our hopes dreams, and expectations.

While I believe in soulmates and their significance, I’ve also learned that other connections can be just as invaluable. In my 20s, I operated in a silo and only prioritized my romantic relationships. In my 30s, I have learned how to nurture my community better.

My best friends are incredibly important to me. They give me advice to round out my thinking, support me when I’m down, take care of my secrets, and make me feel like I belong. I am grateful I have people in my corner who appreciate, understand, protect, center, and love me with a deep recognition and that’s something I wish I nurtured sooner.

Related: Twin Flame: Soulmate's Lesser-Known Cousin

Sometimes, It’s OK To Be the Villain

I used to prioritize being a "good person" in love, often at the expense of my truth. I loved my past partners and wanted to make them happy and comfortable, neglecting my needs, values, and goals. In the process, I found myself repeating my worst habits, and feeling trapped in relationships where the dynamic looped in the same, unhealthy patterns. I got severely depressed and sick-I started losing my hair, my voice, and my power.

Embracing the role of the villain in someone else's story can be empowering if it means staying true to yourself. When I stood up for my authentic truth, it caused discomfort. A few important relationships ended because they no longer worked when I was myself. I wanted to be honest about what I needed and tried not to hurt them but it happened anyway. Sometimes, I blew up my life in the process. I had to learn how to alchemize that pain, forgive myself, and acknowledge where I could do better.

Embracing the role of the villain in someone else's story can be empowering if it means staying true to yourself.

Later on, it hurt to hear how past partners, old friends, and former bosses talked about me. I wanted to jump in with my story to find a mutual sense of closure. But perfect closure doesn't exist. I can't control their interpretations and I'm not perfect. Life is messy. Everybody has their version of events, and the truth is more complicated than right or wrong.

If any past relationships cast me as the villain without taking responsibility, it reflects their journey, not mine—and that's something I've learned to accept. They're doing their best and I recognize the best may not be enough to maintain a healthy relationship between us. I choose to see both sides with multidimensional grace to understand, let go, and move on.

Falling In Love Doesn’t Mean The Story Ends

My partner and I are deeply in love and we have the best intentions for our future. But our best intentions aren't enough. It's a choice we have to make again every single day. Even marriage or kids won’t guarantee forever.  We're a great match, but it's not realistic we're going to be the same people for the rest of our lives. Growth is inevitable in a world where change is the only constant.

Understanding that commitment is a daily choice was the fairytale story I had to update. There’s a necessity to attend and celebrate the funerals of our old selves to evolve into who we're meant to be. I’ve learned the success of a relationship isn’t measured by its duration but by its authenticity. I strive to be my honest self with my partner and create the permissions where he can do the same, so we can move towards our highest purpose.

Society privileges knowingness–we value control, clarity, direction, and concreteness. But we live in an infinite universe where there's so much that we do not know. I can feel myself wanting to hook my future onto some kind of certainty because I want to feel secure, but life is inherently unknowable. As I commit completely to my boyfriend, I am also learning to find peace and resilience in whatever happens. I can’t predict tomorrow, but I know what I want–him by my side, and right now, that’s good enough for me.

Final Thoughts

I think often about how Eastern philosophy is primarily taught with poems because poetry offers flexibility in language. That's how I feel about love. I can try to pin down specific truths about what love means to me and what love has shown me, but the feeling itself is often too slippery to circumscribe and encircle with words.

Dating in my 20s was a whirlwind of growth, lessons, and life-changing turns. I know a little more now, but I'm still stumbling around in my 30s and integrating these lessons. Perhaps that's the point. To risk it all, feel it all, and wake up the next day to do better receiving and giving love however I can.

Read Next: 7 Surprising Ways to Make Your Relationship Better

Read the original article on Verywell Mind.