Healthy relationships don’t look like hallmark cards.

Much to my dismay, they only

occasionally mirror what happens in Rom-Coms and it’s usually the big fight and then
the part where they make up and the speech is never as eloquent, but it is improvised
which is far more impressive… the point I’m trying to make, without drowning it in
analogies, is that nothing can prepare you for love. Even a healthy love, even a perfect
love.

You have to prepare yourself and learn to be the best version of yourself you can
possibly be. You have to create realistic but firm boundaries and limitations of just how
you expect to be treated and respected. You cannot cave to old self destructive habits
spurred by loneliness, the universe will not give you what you do not feel you deserve,
it’s that simple.

The work doesn’t stop when you finally land in that healthy relationship. Because most
of us bring trauma from the past into every new relationship and project it onto our new
partners. Communication is key there, meditation as well. You need to be quiet enough
with those fears and emotions to understand why you’re feeling them and then discuss
that together. I realize how hard that is and we have both fallen short many times, but
always regrouped and tried again… Which brings me to my final point.

The biggest lesson I learned about a healthy love was that… He was unmoving in his
love. He wasn’t going anywhere.

No matter how big the fight, no matter how scared we were, no matter what was going
on in the world, no matter how crazy we felt. He was unmoving in his love. I had never
felt that before… What that does, when you match it, is it allows you both to work
through anything over time with the common goal of reaching an agreement and getting
back on track.

If I had to say what a healthy relationship looked like, it would be something like that. A
huge fight but a fight in which both parties are fighting to find common ground with each
other so they can get back to sharing their lives together. If you can find that, be
unmoving in your love.