8 Lessons I Learned About Love From Beyonce's 'Lemonade'

The visual concept album, which debuted on HBO on April 23, details the complexity of Beyoncé's marriage to Jay Z. While the album has garnered high praise from fans and critics for being her most stunning and artistic work yet, it also made us question: Are Beyoncé and Jay Z okay? 

If there's one big takeaway from "Lemonade," it's that love is fucking complicated. The HBO special was broken down into the stages of Mrs. Carter's dealing with her cheating husband: intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, forgiveness, hope and redemption. With its powerful song lyrics, complex monologues, and breathtaking visuals, "Lemonade" taught me quite a few things about love—most importantly, that it's not exactly this beautiful thing that's glamorized in media.

The ultimate existential question of whether or not love exists surfaces in "Don't Hurt Yourself," when Beyoncé sings, "Love is elusive; no one I know has it." She spits out the words in a fit of anger and passion, and asks the cold, hard question of whether or not love exists. Bey has never been quite this candid about love before, so seeing this new side of her reminds us that even the most idolized, "perfect" relationships have darkness to them.

Those of us lucky enough to have mutual love and support with a partner also face the iciness and hurt that it brings, too. Sometimes, being in love causes pain. "You're my lifeline and you're trying to kill me," Beyoncé sings, which pretty much sums up what being consumed in a dead-end relationship feels like to me. 

Sure, this is a cliché truth, but Beyoncé shows us this crazy side in a way that feels real, honest, and straight-up heartbreaking. To intro her catchy hit, "Hold Up," she's living in a bedroom underwater and says about her dishonest partner: "I tried to change. Closed my mouth more. Tried to be softer, prettier, less awake. Plugged my menses with pages from the Holy Book but still coiled inside me was the need to know: Are you cheating on me?"

She then opens the doors to the room and all the water pours out. She's now on the streets of New Orleans swinging a baseball bat and singing about "What's worse: looking jealous or crazy?" She acknowledges that her lover is treating her badly and walking all over her (see: #3), and embraces this madness. I relate so hard with that feeling of being driven nuts by love.

You know what Beyoncé doesn't put up with? Being a doormat. Sure, her husband may have cheated on her with Becky with the good hair, but she's not going to kiss and make up so easily and tell him it's OK. In "Sorry," she acknowledges that she's made mistakes, too, and while she's angry at her unfaithful husband, she's not "Sorry" for lying or the other cold-hearted mistakes she might have made. 

Putting her middle fingers in her husband's facing and saying "boy bye," she has enough power in herself to know that she's fabulous. For me, she's an inspiring example of how not to let your partner dictate your emotions, and to be free from the need to apologize for the shitty things you might have done. 

Relationships are built on trust, and opening up to your partner is how you build that trust and keep communication strong. Beyoncé bares her soul about the stages of her heartbreak and at one point even prays she catches him in the act of being dishonest. Imagery of her sitting in a bathtub or alone in a cold room at a piano exposes this raw side of her soul. She gave her heart to a man who crushed it into a million pieces.

"Show me your scars and I won't walk away...every promise don't work out that way," Beyoncé sings in "Sandcastles."  She comes to terms with her partner's cheating because she's exposed so much of herself to him that she feels trapped in their relationship. 

My takeaway: Be careful who you give your heart to, and make sure to develop trust. 

While Beyoncé is able to eventually forgive her husband, not all relationships end happily. Exposing your soul to someone and becoming vulnerable sometimes ends in heartbreak. Beyoncé experiences rage in the beginning of the album...but she's not sorry for it. And in that sense, she seeks her revenge and feels empowered.

So when I'm seeking closure in a relationship, I know the best kind of revenge is knowing that I actually have enough strength to move forward. And being a boss queen, at that. 

At the album's start, it appears that Bey is singing about her husband. Later on, we find out it might be more deeply-rooted, extending to her relationship with her father. In the song "Daddy Issues," she delves into the idea that her husband treats her the way her father mistreated her mother.

"You remind me of my father, a magician. Able to exist in two places at once," Beyoncé says. However, she seeks unintentional emotional comfort in the fact that her husband is like her father. In the "Daddy Issues" video we see Bey and Jay's close relationship, which she's attached to, even if she refuses to believe the cheating part is true. Patterns are a big theme in the video.

But what's fascinating is that sometimes we, as humans, do seek comfort in patterns. They're familiar to us and even though they might be unhealthy, we pretend they give us satisfaction. And in some cases, love.

In Beyoncé's redemption chapter, we see images of a happy Jay and Bey on their wedding day, along with him sweetly being a father to Blue Ivy. After all the turmoil, rage and heartbreak, she chooses to accept his flaws and acknowledges that love grows apart, and then grows back together.

"I think of lovers as trees...growing to and from one another. Searching for the same light," she says. Sometimes this "light" works out, and couples are able to move forward or reconcile. And if they don't find that same light, well, perhaps they weren't meant to be. As she later says:

"My grandma said 'Nothing real can be threatened.' True love brought salvation back into me. With every tear came redemption and my torturers became my remedy. So we're gonna heal. We're gonna start again. You've brought the orchestra, synchronized swimmers."

For me, one of the biggest takeaways from "Lemonade" wasn't just the romantic aspect of love, but also the familial love between generations of women. Queen B not only refers to her mother in the video, but she also features her daughter, Blue Ivy, and their happiness as a family. The video also features her grandmother in a homemade video giving a lemonade recipe. She says, "I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade."

This is the most important love lesson of all. I must choose to make lemonade out of the love I believe in—which holds true for myself, my family and my romantic partners.