What I Wish I Knew About Love

242 Pages·2021·0.977 MB·English

by  Kirstie Taylor

Copyright © 2021 Kirstie Taylor.
All rights reserved.
Published by Thought Catalog Books, an imprint of the digital magazine
Thought Catalog, which is owned and operated by The Thought &
Expression Company LLC, an independent media organization based in
Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles, California.
The events, places, and conversations in this book have been recreated from
memory. The chronology of events may have been compressed. When
necessary, the names and identifying characteristics of individuals and
places have been changed to maintain anonymity.
This book was produced by Chris Lavergne and Noelle Beams. Art
direction and design by KJ Parish. Special thanks to Bianca Sparacino for
creative editorial direction and Isidoros Karamitopoulos for circulation
management.
Visit us on the web at thoughtcatalog.com and shopcatalog.com.
Made in the United States of America.
ISBN 978-1-949759-30-3
Introduction
Love (or pain due to a lack of love) is a theme that runs through every
person’s life, molding who they are and reframing the way they view the
world. Yet no one teaches us about love. We’re expected to know how to
swim through it, when most of us can barely tr ead water.
I decided to write this book because I wish someone had taught me how to
swim instead of having to learn the hard way: through broken hearts, late-
night texts to my exes, and tear-soaked pillows. There’s no book out there
that gives fluff-free advice about the journey of finding a great relationship.
Some books focus on the single life, others on dating, and many on
relationships. But this book covers all of that. Because having written over
five hundred articles on dating, relationships, and self-love, I know a thing
or two about this world.
If you’re like I was, feeling like a victim of my love life, rather than in
control, then these words on what I’ve learned over the years are for you.
May they teach you how to swim.
I was obsessed with the idea of love as far back as I could remember. I
wanted it from my parents. From my grandmother and my aunt. I wanted it
from the boy in my kindergarten class and every friend I made. But you
never would’ve met me and thought I had this desire to be loved. I was an
independent child who could entertain herself for hours as long as I was
outside. I’d find tadpoles to make my pets or trees to climb. I had friends
from school and in the neighborhood who I rode bikes with, but I wasn’t
that great at becoming close friends with any of them. My need for closeness
with other people lived inside me but I didn’t know how to properly express
or fulfill it. But from hearing girls talk about their boyfriends as early as
elementary school, I figured I could satiate my need for love through a boy.
I wanted someone to call my boyfriend and care about me in the ways I saw
teenagers at the mall act in their relationships.
My first taste of that kind of affection came in the fourth grade. My mom
would take me to skate at the local ice rink with my friends from school and
wouldn’t come back to pick me up until sunset. My friends and I had free
reign of the rink, along with the other kids from the surrounding schools.
On one particular day, I noticed a boy look at me while I was untying my
sneakers. His cheeks became rosy as he walked over and commented that he
liked my shoes. His name was Corey and he had a messy head of brunette
hair. He was one grade older than me (yes, I liked older men, even in the
fourth grade). He came to the rink with a group of three other boys and we
combined our friend groups for the day. All of us battled it out at air hockey
and challenged each other to see who could get a stuffed tiger at the claw
machine (Spoiler: it was me. I’ve always rocked at the claw machine). Then
we moved our focus over to the ice rink. A few laps into skating, Corey came
up alongside me and smiled. He grabbed my hand and laced his fingers
between mine. I was elated. A feeling of electricity pulsed through my body.
At the end of the night, Corey took down my number before his mom
picked him up so we could stay in touch. When I got home, I waited
anxiously for him to call. I imagined our future together: skating every
week at the ice rink. We’d go to movies together and he’d be the boy I had
my first kiss with. But days passed, then weeks. The phone didn’t ring once
with Corey on the other end. Each time my friends and I went to the skating
rink, I’d search for him. But I never saw Corey again. You could say that
was my first heartbreak.
Maybe he didn’t feel the electric connection I did, or perhaps he lost the
Juicy Fruit gum wrapper he’d written my number on. Either way, Corey
ignited in me an intense infatuation with what I thought was love.
I didn’t realize it then, but my idea of how love works was greatly shaped
from that experience. I’d fallen into a romantic narrative with a boy I didn’t
even know the last name of. That would’ve been cute if I’d left that habit in
elementary school, but I carried it well into my adulthood. In fact, a lot of
the ways I thought love worked were wrong: from how to give it, to
receiving it, to what it even looked like. Reflecting back, it really did feel like
I was thrown into the deep end of a pool and faintly heard someone yell,
“Good luck!” If there was ever a time to use the term “trial and error,” it
would be to describe my love life.
And I know I’m not alone in this.
Years of failed relationships, heartbreaks, and a lot of sadness passed before
I stopped to question why love felt so painful. I didn’t want to feel like a
victim to love anymore, I wanted to be in control. So I took matters into my
own hands.
I re-focused my energy from obsessing over trying to make people love me
to learning about the subject of love. I’ve read thousands of articles and
consumed every ounce of knowledge I could from books. If there’s a case
study out there about how love affects our adult lives, I’ve read it. With all
of that new-found knowledge, I began applying it to my own life and started
seeing massive changes. That’s when I decided to write about my
experiences. Since then, I’ve published over five hundred articles. I’ve
discussed relationships and dating on podcasts and in Forbes. My work has
been featured in magazines across the nation (including airports, which still
blows my mind) and websites my younger self would have only dreamed of
being in. It’s safe to say I really do love love. So much so, I made a career
from it.
Through everything I learned, I wondered why we’re never taught about
love: not in school, by our parents, or in the media (at least in a healthy
sense). The only times I’d ever heard of people being educated on
relationships was right before marriage or well into one. Essentially, two
points in one’s life when it’s a little too late.
That’s why I’m writing these words. They’re for anyone finding themselves
in one unhappy relationship after another, struggling with self-esteem, or
needs a little help with their dating lives. This book is a culmination of
everything about love I wish an older sister or quirky aunt had taught me
when I was younger. So, think of me as that older sister or eccentric aunt,
wine glass in hand, ready to lay it all out for you.
This book is for anyone who wants to radically change the way they
experience love. I’ll tear apart misguided ideas on love we learned as
children. You’ll be asked to answer difficult questions to gain a better
understanding of why you struggle with love (including self-love). I’ll talk
about the best ways to go about finding a partner you deserve. After that,
we’ll go through how to create and maintain a healthy relationship.
I hope you benefit from the lessons I’ve learned and let them guide you to
having fulfilling romantic relationships, friendships, and self-love anyone is
capable of having. I won’t lie to you and say love is easy. This book doesn’t
have secret answers to finding your soulmate (which I don’t believe in
anyway). But the words you’re about to read will give you hope,
understanding, and confidence to move into the world of love. This is what I
wish I knew about love.