Why Listening To Your Heart Is The Only Relationship Advice You’ll Ever Need
What we often forget when it comes to relationships and love is that each and every one of us lives a bespoke human experience. What you feel, think, and observe is unique to you. No one else will ever live the life you live, understand the warmth your heart feels like when you’re with a specific person, or the way your eyes light up when you’re face to face with your crush. No one will understand the pain you went through with that former toxic lover, or how some wounds are still unhealed that consistently resurface. Your friends, parents, siblings, coworkers, and everyone else around you simply will never fully grasp the connection you have with another soul.
As we move through life, meet new people, and fall in and out of love, there will always be a few people you cross paths with who leave a special mark on you. They might’ve been exactly what you needed at that time, showing you new depths of love. Or they might’ve been the right person at the wrong time, making you question the capacity of soulmates. Or maybe they were a former friend who turned into a situationship, where the love was there but fear got in the way of true commitment. Whatever the circumstance, it likely was an indescribable form of attachment.
That’s the paradox of real human connection—there is an inherent challenge of describing its depth and essence to people outside of you. What you share with others is never the full story, because it is a deeply felt experience that encompasses emotions, empathy, understanding, physical sensations, and shared moments, making it difficult to fully articulate or capture in words alone. The more profound the connection, the more it seems to elude precise description.
No matter how many details you share with your closest friends of what occurred between you and another, you’re never fully describing the full picture. Some moments are left out and some are just not articulated in its entirety. Maybe that’s partly because you want to hold those precious moments safely within you without any distortion, or maybe sometimes you don’t fully understand it yourself, so how can others get it? All you know is that you have a feeling. Call it intuition or call it logical reasoning—your heart feels something powerful.
When we’re in the midst of getting to know someone, we often dismiss our intuition and self-trust and seek external validation, wisdom, and advice before listening to what our bodies and minds are telling us. We scroll on TikTok to read through the red flags we might be dismissing, or we send screenshots to our friends so they can help us craft a solid response that says, “I’m into you, but I’m playing it cool.” We resort to external sources that cloud our minds, leading us to act in a way that isn’t aligned with our pure intentions. We essentially let go of ourselves to fit a mold of how one ‘should’ be dating or how one ‘should’ act in a relationship. We listen to what others feel is the right ‘timeline’ to be in a commitment relationship, often dismissing the realities of things that are outside our control.
But when we absorb other people’s advice and act on it, it somehow always feels a little off. As though what they recommend we do isn’t what we feel we should do, but we do it anyway. And days later, we regret the choices we make, leading us to wonder, “Would things be different if I just listened to my intuition?”
The advice someone gives, regardless of it being purely intentional, is based on their own personal experiences. It’s what THEY would do if they were in your shoes. But reminder: they’re not you, and your experiences with love are likely very different than theirs. So how could their recommendations be relevant to you?
The wisest thing you can do is this: listen to what’s going on inside of yourself. Quiet the external noise and closely pay attention to the signals your heart is sending. Even if they feel delusional, unrealistic, frustrating, or absurd, your intuition is your higher self sending you the messages you need to hear to get you on the path that is the most right.
Allow your own mind and heart to guide you on how to act, where to go, and what to say. If something feels slightly off, trust that feeling. If in your heart you know the chapter between you and another isn’t closed yet, it likely isn’t. If some part of you wants to reopen a door with a past lover because you feel called to do so, do it. Whatever your intuition is saying, let it guide you. Ignore what others think and try not to share every move with the people around you.
When you think back to all of the beautiful decisions you’ve made in your life, you likely got there by listening to something inside yourself and ignoring what others were thinking. Why can’t we adopt that same mindset when it comes to love?
The outcome might not always be rainbows and butterflies, but at least we followed our hearts.