If you’d told me at 17 that a dusty, 1937 novel in the back corner of my high school library would alter the way I approach love, I’d have laughed in your face and gone back to devouring whatever paperback romance I’d hidden inside my chemistry textbook. But that’s exactly what happened when I stumbled across Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Back then, I checked it out partly because I’d heard my cousin say her English teacher described it as “Black love meets Shakespearean tragedy.” Sold. Plus, it was short, which felt like a win for my attention span. What I didn’t count on was how much Janie Crawford’s journey would stick with me and continue to whisper in my ear about the kind of love I wanted—and the kind I didn’t.

Let’s chat about the lessons Janie taught me, soul sister to soul sister, and how those moments still rear their head when I’m sorting the frogs from princes in the swampy waters of 21st-century romance.

Lesson 1: Love Ain’t a Lightning Bolt, It’s a Horizon

Early in the novel, Hurston delivers a town-stopping scene: 16-year-old Janie, sitting beneath a blossoming pear tree, feels an electric sense of longing as she watches bees flirt with flowers. “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze.” Whew. I had to pause and drink some water after reading that one.

For Janie, this moment sparks her yearning for love that feels just as divine, just as symphonically sweet. But, as life often does, the real thing isn’t quite as neat. Janie marries Logan Killicks, a rangy farmer her grandmother approves of (spoiler alert: he has the romantic energy of feet in wet socks). That’s when it clicked for me: settling for someone because it’s safe or logical wasn’t going to get me my pear-tree moment. Dating, for me, started to feel less like looking for fireworks and more like searching for an open horizon—a love that stretches me, slowly and surely, like the Carolina coastline unfolding at sunset.

Lesson 2: Control Is Not Love

In her second marriage, Janie meets Joe Starks, a charismatic man with a touch of Obama in his swagger and probably some Future in his toxicity. Joe is that guy who, at first, makes your girlfriends text “HE’S A KEEPER” in all caps. He builds Janie a mansion, makes her First Lady of Eatonville, and treats her like a trophy displayed in glass.

But here’s the thing Hurston nails: picture-perfect relationships can be hollow as a pie crust with no filling. Joe dictates how Janie looks, speaks, and interacts with the world. It’s his love, but only on his terms, leaving no room for her to be, well, Janie.

That storyline slapped me particularly hard in my early twenties. At the time, I was dating a guy who, bless his heart, thought “compromise” meant I should ditch my poetry readings and become a regular at his nephew’s flag football practices. Sometimes compromise felt tiny—changing my earrings because he thought hoops were “too much.” Other times, it felt suffocating—taking a backseat to his career choices, even if it meant parking my own dreams of writing full-time.

Janie (and Zora, through her) taught me that love asks for growth, not shrinking. Partnerships should free us to expand, complicate, and even surprise ourselves—not deliver us in neat gift-wrap as an accessory to the life someone else designed.

Lesson 3: True Love Can Look Absolutely Bonkers to Everyone Else

And then came Tea Cake. To some, he was Janie’s third strike—underemployed, unpredictable, and, let’s face it, a little reckless. But for all his human flaws (and they were fine flaws indeed), Tea Cake gave Janie something invaluable: joy. The man taught her to fish, play guitar, and how to love unashamedly.

Even as I write this, I feel my inner Aunt Pearl peeking over her readers and tsk-ing about how Tea Cake gambles away their money. Listen, I’m not suggesting y’all go for broke with someone who can’t be trusted with a debit card. But I stand by what Janie discovers: there’s something sacred about love that feels playful and freeing, even if it makes other people uncomfortable.

For me, this lesson came alive during my years in New York. After a slew of chronically “put-together” dates with men who wore oxford shoes to trivia night, I went out with an amateur jazz saxophonist I’ll call Malcolm. He showed up in a thrift-store denim jacket and gave me a tin of fancy loose-leaf tea—“he thought it looked cool,” he said with a shrug. Over oysters at a hole-in-the-wall bar, he told me stories about how his old band used to busk on the subway to make rent. I laughed till I cried that evening, mainly because we got caught in the rain later and had to race each other barefoot around Times Square while holding soggy napkin umbrellas.

Malcolm wasn’t my forever-man—we fizzled after three glorious months. But I learned how incredible it feels to say yes to someone who makes you feel alive, not just “accomplished.”

Lesson 4: Nobody Gets to Edit Your Love Story

By the end of the novel, Janie’s been widowed twice, stolen into love, tossed by hurricanes, and returned to her hometown with a heart full of experiences no one else understands. But she’s unbowed and, most importantly, unashamed. When old gossiping neighbors spit, “Dat Tea Cake wasn’t nothin’!” Janie responds with what remains one of my favorite power flexes in literature: “Ah done been tuh de horizon and back, and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons.”

Let that sink in for a second. What Hurston doesn’t say outright—what she lets simmer just beneath—is this: Black women, historically expected to sacrifice their wants for duty or legacy, deserve to craft love stories distinctly, audaciously, their own. Those gossiping neighbors? They can sit at their porches and talk till their lemonade runs dry. Janie knows her experiences are beyond anyone’s permission to judge.

In my Gullah roots, we have a saying for that same sentiment: “Nuhbody cya tek yuh story from yuh.” No one can take your story from you. That mantra echoes in me every time my well-meaning aunties ask, “When you gon’ settle, baby? You ain’t getting no younger, you know.”

Like Janie, I’ve learned to let the busybodies have their whispers. Because life and love, in the end, don’t come down to the opinions of a neighbor—or a dating coach shouting formulas on TikTok, for that matter. They’re about the horizon you believe, wholeheartedly, you deserve.

Janie once sat under a pear tree, imagining love as lush and triumphant as the meeting of bees and blossoms. That image taught me to trust my own tiny, tender hopes for love, even in the face of doubt or disapproval. It didn’t promise me that love would arrive in neat packages or follow a prescribed timeline. But it reassured me that it’s okay to want the horizon—to chase it, claim it, and let it stretch until it fits my whole being.

So, my friends, here’s what I’ll leave you with: You don’t need to wait for life to hand you the perfect story. Whether your Tea Cake is on the way, or you’re content crafting your own pear-tree moments solo, honor the beauty of your personal page-turner. Reclaim your plot twists. Whisper your own vows to the horizon. And most of all, refuse to let anyone close the book on you, but you.