Struggling to Maintain a Serious Relationship? You Aren’t Alone

My whole life I’ve seen people around me treat their relationships like candy. They think they can just get a new one.

Does that mean their love has an expiration date? Their divorce paper shows it all.

No shade to a divorcee. It’s the people who don’t even try to keep their relationship together for me.

Why drag somebody else and tell them you promised them the world when a year later you are no longer interested?

The thing about romantic relationships is, most people aren’t even ready for it. You can find the most compatible and perfect human being to be with but if you don’t know how to love someone else other than you, it’ll still fall apart in no time.

Obviously, this is easier said than done.

I’m in a long-term relationship myself and some days my partner and I just don’t get along. We’d fight over stupid things at a stupid hour. We’d break each other’s hearts by saying the wrong things.

Just the other day, we argued about some family issues. Although we didn’t end up killing each other, I still cursed for the next hour in my head.

In a moment like that, you don’t even have to find the reasons to leave. They’ll cross your mind for sure.

My point is, if maintaining a relationship is easy, everyone would be coupled up. No one wants to spend Valentine’s Day alone.

But that’s not the reality. And we all should normalize going through hard phases in a romantic relationship.

Is it always worth it? Only you can tell.

Many people expect things will be easy when you’re with the right partner. And it’s not necessarily true. It might be less complicated but it doesn’t mean you won’t have big fights ever.

When faced with this dark side of a relationship, most people just want to bail. I don’t blame them. My own mother bailed on a good guy once — just because he didn’t turn out to be the “best” husband she expected.

It’s the expectations that kill most relationships.

That’s why I don’t ever want to sell you promises on how good being in a relationship is. Because it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

So if you’re feeling bad today that your relationship isn’t as perfect as other couples, stop and give yourself a break.

You’re doing the best you can and that’s all that matters.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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