I Figured My Luck Would Translate In Love, But It Never Did

I've always considered myself lucky. I felt lucky to live where I grew up and where I've moved since, and I've been blessed with the most incredible group of people to call my family and friends.

My life has just been lucky. I got good grades without a lot of effort, I liked the skin I was in, and most of all, I seemingly conquered getting exactly what I wanted the majority of the time.

My life was a lucky one. Well, at least I thought it was.

It was the small things I navigated well, but it wasn't until I got a touch of bad luck within the big picture that I realized being lucky, in my case, wasn't pure luck at all.

My positivity, optimism and love for people got me far in life, but something it did not get me far in was love. I was always fallen upon good things, except, it seemed, good men.

The men who stole my heart were always thieves, and stealing my heart was not merely an expression, it was the true reality of my relationships. I let them steal my heart time and time again because I assumed their love for me was real.

But when I felt this heartbreak, I was never surprised. In fact, I felt since I was so lucky in all others parts of my world, I had no right to succeed in love.

I felt as if my failure in love was fated; love just wasn't my talent in life. And I didn't think there was anything to be done about it.

My optimism was weak in terms of love, but regardless, it always held true. It didn't take much convincing for me to love the men I loved, but my eagerness to show off my feelings for these men led to easy heartbreak when they turned their heads and changed their minds.

Controlling other peoples' emotions was simply what I thought love was. I thought, once you loved someone, they had to love you back.

But despite all of the love I had to give, I learned you couldn't make someone love you back. Even with the utmost effort of trying to control a man's emotions — trying to make a man I had decided to love love me — forcing your feelings onto someone will never make them love you.

Forcing your feelings onto someone will never make them love you.

Knowing this, I went into every new relationship with an open mind, but a closed heart. I was trying to protect myself from being hurt more by keeping my heart under lock and key.

For someone who felt as lucky in life as me, someone who felt love as strongly as I did, it truly didn't take much for me to open my heart, so I thought it was OK to block it off, thinking the right person would open it up.

That was my problem.

I was constantly torn between being cold-hearted and having a sweet soul, indecisive about whether I should let myself love or protect myself by holding myself back. And I never really made a decision about it because I assumed the right person would come along and make that decision for me, but that isn't anyone else's decision to make.

You see, in love, we must always keep our hearts in check. While it's OK to protect yourself from heartbreak, you can't go into love claiming you have an open mind without also having an open heart. If you want to fall in love, your heart has to be open to it. And if you find love, well, that's lucky.

While I always begged for my luck in life to be transferred to love, I realized what needed to be done in regards to the men I adored was I needed it to be right. The love couldn't be forced.

When feeling unlucky in love, or even unlucky in life, remember true love is not a game, nor is it a battlefield. It will come to you in time if you open your heart to it.

Love is lucky because it is beautiful and rare, and when righteously found, it is everything enchanting in between.