It seems to me that for us, young people, the most appalling thing we can do is to believe in love unequivocally. Not because it doesn't exist, but on the contrary, because it exists, because it is more indispensable than ever, but also because at this strange moment we live in, it requires much more vulnerability and courage than it did for some previous generations.

As a matter of fact – circumstances have changed. And saying that Internet has ruffled some feathers of interpersonal relationships may be a platitude, but it is one that cannot be ignored. We are more networked than ever before, we are lonelier than we have ever been, and the willingness for creating a committed, healthy, and long-term relationship, or falling in love, becomes a real small rebellion against capitalist narratives that have somehow caught up in the realm of intimacy.

When we talk about young people and love, we often hear that we are frivolous generations. That we invent new kinds of partnerships, that we don't know what we want, that nothing is enough for us, and that all the foundations on which the world has been built are failing because of us. However, when we, as young people, talk about love, when we honestly open up and talk about our needs, what is indelible is the desire to be loved and accepted in a space that makes such a setting complicated.

When a few of us get together, it's as if the same story keeps coming up. The story with the anecdotes about abruptly broken relationships without a single accompanying word, about emotionally unavailable partners, inconsistently given attention, manipulation and the depth of pain that goes hand in hand with all this. We have adopted and naturalized these phenomena to such an extent that it has become almost expected that we or someone close to us must go through this baptism by fire, sometimes even more than once. And we really do.

We may have freed love as such over the past decades, we may have stood up for the right to love whom and how we want, but it gets increasingly complicated to come to that in practice. Especially when we're sabotaging ourselves more and more. Solitude and no-partner situation go hand in hand with a consistently fun but ultimately tragic role – necessary for us to feel fulfilled and living to the fullest, but essentially acceptable only if we manage to leave it in the past at the end of the day.

But in order to take such a step, we struggle with excessive pressure - external and internal. We are burdened with an overwhelming amount of options, starting from choosing jeans that we can buy in the store, all the way to choosing a partner, with the accompanying promise that there is always something new and something better than what we already have. We are paralyzed to make a decision, and the moment we are required to make more effort, the spiral of fear that we are missing something, pulls us to the bottom.

That’s why it is not surprising that it is so difficult for us to make up our mind and to commit to anything, thus hurting others who have managed to free themselves from such constraints. Because, after all, making a choice and sticking to it requires commitment, just as telling someone that you love him or her, takes responsibility. The moment we are vulnerable with someone, we become in charge of the other person's feelings, and if we do not trust ourselves or others, that promise is broken.

They teach us to pursue individualism while we are craving for collectivism. We hear that we must be gentle to ourselves, but we often and selfishly practice this care at the expense of others. They tell us that we must be ready for love, forgetting that loving is a muscle that can only be practiced in pairs, that one becomes ready through actions, that trust cannot be built by ourselves only and that wounds are essentially healed only if we remove the protective patch from them so that the skin can breathe again.

It is difficult to cope with the contradictory discrepancies with which we grew up and with which we still have to grow, but it is of the utmost importance to win this fight eventually. Through conversations, through therapy, through rethinking one's own actions, through understanding other people's actions and through forgiveness that at some crucial moments we could not have done better.

We all seek love, but we must also be brave enough in spite of everything to give it when we get the chance, because there wouldn't be many of them. Let's remember how humanity is lost in relationships if we constantly try to stay protected. Let’s accept ourselves and others with all our imperfections. Let’s work on ourselves, ask for help, give tenderness so that we could receive it.

The love we seek exists because we exist. And that's how it is.