Love is patient, love is kind.

It sounds simple, right? Almost as if we can mutter these words during any hardship in a relationship, friendship, or tough moment, and everything will be well again. But it’s not that easy. We have to truly understand what love being patient means. In Corinthians 13:4, it explains that it means choosing to be slow to anger, enduring difficult people or situations without resentment, and showing mercy over immediate gratification. It is a proactive commitment to long-term care and kindness rather than a passive feeling, often reflecting divine, forgiving love.

Some key concepts behind love being patient lie within the realms of endurance, calmness, mercy, and persistence.

Long-suffering can fall under endurance. This is when you learn to bear offences and endure hard times without complaints. This is hard, especially when you’re trying to become someone new. Maybe you used to complain as a coping mechanism, or maybe it simply feels like the natural thing to do. Complaining is so common in today’s world that it has been normalised. You may meet someone for the first time, and within one conversation they’ve complained about someone else, the weather, or a minor pain. It’s easy to overlook, but when we compare our minor complaints to truly major problems, it can seem unnecessary to complain about such small things.

I saw a quote the other day that said: if you were to throw your problems into a jar with everyone else’s, would you pick yours back up or risk getting someone else’s? I think the majority of us would keep our own. They feel big, ginormous even, sometimes because they’re ours, because they’re happening to us. But if we were to compare them to someone facing a far greater, life-changing or heartbreaking problem, maybe we would complain less.

Two people coming together does not instantly make one person, it’s a process. A process of learning, understanding, failing, unlearning, relearning, trusting, growing, and so much more. So much has to happen because you are, in a sense, becoming one. When two people come together who, although similar, have different pasts, this process takes time, extra unlearning, extra relearning, extra patience, and extra kindness.

I never understood “for better or for worse” until recently. To love someone regardless of the problems, to know you would always pick your own “problem” back out of the hat, to always try to be patient and kind, it’s hard. But when you truly love someone, it won’t matter where you are, what you’re doing, or how far you stray, you or they will always find your way back to each other.

In the same way we can drift from God and stray from the path, He will always be there. His love won’t decrease or change, no matter how far you wander. I believe this can reflect the love between two people. If you have been brought together and are continually guided back to one another, that isn’t coincidence or randomness. You are meant to be in each other’s lives.

Real love isn’t easy, four words I didn’t used to believe. It’s work. It’s compromise, not on everything, because you should be aligned in many ways, but on some things. It’s being patient when you want answers, when you want to run. It’s loving even when you feel like you have nothing left to give, because they deserve it. It’s admitting when you’re wrong, even when it feels uncomfortable. It’s choosing kindness when you feel moody (still working on this one).

It is being there, for better or for worse. Love is patient, and love is kind.

So when you find yourself wondering why everything isn’t perfect all the time, remember, it’s not meant to be. Unless you’re both AI, and even then, I’m sure there would still be glitches and missteps. It’s not meant to be perfect. What growth comes from perfection? There’s nowhere to go if everything is flawless.

You wouldn’t have the stories, the times he got mad because you left him three mushrooms for dinner, or when she self-sabotaged for three weeks straight only to come back, knowing there was no one else. Those moments matter too.

Love is in the smallest things, the tiniest moments that add up to something abundant and joyful. They build a story that is dramatic, suspenseful, exciting, real. All those little things come together so that when you look at each other, you see all of them at once, and for that moment, everything feels completely and utterly perfect.

Then the ADHD kicks in and ruins it.

Seriously though, in every form of love you experience, live in it. Enjoy every moment. And at every turn, remember:

Love is patient, and love is kind.

‍ ‍Sending love,

K.