#RelationshipGoals

11262356_10206720360317866_1929929064_nWritten by Vanessa Sporne – Country to Canberra Teen Blogger

Waking up to a morning kiss and lying in bed until noon, spending the evening strolling hand-in-hand along a golden shore, coming home to a bedroom smothered in rose petals and scented with lavender, then laying under the stars at midnight with only your heartbeats interrupting the silent night. It’s the fairytale. It’s the perfect, blissful life that is free of worries and troubles and stress and inconvenience. It’s a world where nothing can tear you down from your cloud of happiness that floats above what is classified as reality. How could anything go wrong when you’ve got someone to call ‘yours’?

When we’ve found someone, everything in our lives simply falls into place, right? All we need to do is find that one individual on this planet that is going to alleviate every wound we’ve ever suffered. A relationship will solve everything… right? At least this is what social media has been teaching me for the past 12 months; all I need to do is find a partner and BAM! I’ll never be unhappy again.

Pressure to be in a relationship is not a new concept at all, however, the emergence of the hashtag ‘#relationshipgoals’, has taken it to a new level. A constant stream of media floods my newsfeed, portraying the type of heterosexual relationship that I’m supposed to be yearning. Not only do Facebook and Instagram command what kind of relationship I should be in, but they also provide me with a convenient little format for my partner too! Not only should he have the jawline of a Calvin Klein model, but he must also be; showering me in pandora jewellery, surprising me with rooms full of puppies, taking me on surprise getaways to France, telling every single person, every single day about how much he loves me, and serenading me before bed each night (obviously he has to have the voice of an angel).

If we expect to be worshipped by our significant others, our romantic relationships will never last because that’s just not what they’re about.

It’s absurd that social media has risen to a level of power that allows them to dictate one of the most important aspects of being human: our intimate relationships. Facebook and Instagram are teaching us that we must look for this specific human being that they have constructed in order to feel fulfilled in a relationship, and that’s simply not true. Social media is claiming that they know what every one of the 7,407,703,424 people on this planet need in a relationship, and we believe them! The hashtag has become a way in which the image of the perfect relationship is propagated and promoted, with couples from around the world displaying their success in fulfilling the ‘relationship criteria’. 

Of course it is important for couples to be proud of what they have, but be proud of your uniqueness. No couple and no singular person fits the set of characteristics that social media has established for us. It’s a blatant lie.

Loving someone is about loving them for who they are, not whether they fit some idea of the perfect person. Relationships are about perseverance, determination and selflessness. They are an incredible thing that allows us to not only make a lasting impact on another person, but to also grow ourselves. They are an essential element of life, that social media is attempting to taint with fake notions of what constitutes love.

So don’t follow the criteria. We don’t need to be in a relationship to feel happy or fulfilled. Our partner doesn’t need to tick any boxes set for us by what we see online. Our relationships don’t need to be conventional, all they need to be is healthy for us and our partner. There are inevitable difficulties in being intimate with someone, and before we understand this, and stop believing the idealised lie of social media, it’s impossible for us to have lasting, beneficial romantic unions.