Does he love me?

"My heart skipped a beat! He smiled again in my direction, but he was cuddling another girl. Maybe they're a thing, maybe I should just say hi...why does he keep staring anyways? I ignored the girl and walked over to say hi but the girl kept snuggling closer. What was I to do? I just turned and walked back. I thought he liked me".-Lucy

Sometimes, relationships and love do not come to us as we had expected it to. Some of us fall in love with the right person, for the wrong reason and at the wrong time, and others just fall in love with the wrong person generally. In Lucy's case, she obviously liked a boy who didn't like her in return ; who knows? maybe he was just smiling at someone behind her, but she was already drawn to him.

Real romantic relationships are more than crushes and infatuations and are full of zig zag moments and mazes to everyone. No one has a perfect relationship and it's perfectly okay to get into fights once in a while, however it takes love to hold things in place.

I remember asking Lucy how she felt everytime she saw him. Her reply was simple: "he gives my stomach butterflies, and my heart skips a beat" okay! do you give his stomach butterflies too? her answer of course was "I don't know. He loves me, he loves me not". I went further to probe when i asked her if she actually talked to him about her feelings her reply was rather disheartening " we don't even talk. I love him from a distance, he doesn't know, he doesn't need to know".

Real romantic relationships are a two-way thing I give you butterflies, give me butterflies too. I make your heart skip, make mine skip too. Every energy coming from one angle is obviously not healthy. Lucy based her heart on whether he loved her or not. Romantic relationships do not survive on that line, there must be a degree of certainty as both parties are supposed to be aware of each other's feelings and be ready to answer the "I love" question when ever it is asked. 

Sometimes when talking to people about their relationships, I like making references to my present relationship. Before I started anything, I had put my head into the box. Am I willing to take this step? do I really love him? how does he feel about me too? then I told him how I felt and listened to his reply (very un-Nigerian girl of me right?) The more time we spent together, the more we grew together and fell in love right. The communication prevented me from assuming he loved me or assuming he didn't. We all need to guard our hearts with our heads when it has to do with love (it's a very tricky thing) else it will roll us like big sausage rolls, and devour us like zombies.

The communication bits of any relationship doesn't happen over night, you need to constantly build it like the tower of babel (this one will not fall in Jesus name). It's certainly different for different people but how will you know about your crush if you don't walk up to him/her? My introvert people will ask me "how do we cope!" well, I would say, creating relationships in bits helps build your confidence level. Maybe just a group of three friends of mixed personality traits (mostly extroverts though) for beginners might help you gain enough confidence to approach your crush.

I read somewhere that "the best thing to hold onto in life, is each other" (Audrey Hepburn) communication helps buttress this five hundred percent. Assumptions kill your confidence.

So basically long and short, this babe is saying relationships strive on love, communication and Understanding.