Do we have to choose between success and love?

Does it have to be one or the other—success in our careers, our life’s work, and our art, or being able to love and be loved in an emotionally-stable relationship?

Most people say yes. Love is sacrifice and something has to give.

I don’t think so.

I think it’s possible to have it all:

To work hard and be independent and have all the success we want in the world, and to have a solid, committed, healthy relationship. To be an artist, travel the world, invest ourselves completely in our work, while investing our heart completely in another being.

I’m tired of seeing artists and entrepreneurs lonely. I am tired of seeing successful people at the top of their careers living at the bottom of their hearts.

I don’t subscribe to the belief that to be successful, I have to pour more than everything into my work and nothing into my heart.

I don’t believe that a relationship between artists, successful business owners and entrepreneurs can only exist if it is void of depth and meaning.

I don’t buy into the narrative that successful people, artists especially, have to be tortured, suffering and starving.

I know this is not the only way.

I have met many successful couples who make it work, who travel separately for business or pleasure and are still in healthy, committed life-partnerships. I have met people who give up nothing to succeed in what they do, yet still succeed in their personal lives. I have seen partnerships between two extraordinary individuals thrive as they live their own lives, kick ass at their own work and are there to lift each other up along the way—loving each other completely and fully.

Are these people special?

Do they have something the rest of us don’t?

What’s their secret?

The secret is this: they choose to have it all.

They choose to have their cake and eat it too, instead of subscribing to the belief that between success and love, we have to pick just one.

We are extraordinary beings capable of giving and receiving endless amounts of love and care.

We can have it all, we just have to choose that—instead of continuing to choose our own suffering.

 

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Author: Annabelle Blythe

Image: Mario Piperni/Flickr

Editor: Nicole Cameron