Real love is equally mutual. Only when both persons are equally devoted to the other is love achieved. It requires a willingness to sacrifice yourself to save the other in times of need. It requires compromise. It requires accepting faults. It requires a best friend as well as lover. It requires absolute, uncompromised trust and faithfulness. It requires a level of attraction that makes the rest of humanity seem completely ugly in comparison. It also requires the patience to wade through the large number of fish in the sea, never settling for anything less than that perfect love... impatience, the inability to stay single, and hormones often cause us to choose mates for all the wrong reasons. Real love does involve arguments and disagreements, but still requires communication and understanding to rise above them. Most of all, it requires mental and emotional stamina and the willingness to stick with that person no matter what life may throw at you. Love is something you have to work hard at all the time. If one person is doing all/most of the work to keep the relationship together, resentment will set in, and failure is emminent.
Some of you may say that I am being idealistic, but after 5 happy years of marriage and 7 years together total, I can honestly say I'm speaking from experience. My husband and I are still acting like newlyweds... the honeymoon never ended. We never get sick of eachother, we do everything together... in fact, after 7 years, we've only spent a night apart on three occasions - and I remember each horrible time. Love and devotion like that didn't come free or easy. We work hard for every scrap of it.
I'm sorry to hear if you're having troubles in your love life, fugley. However, if you cannot accept the faults of the one you are with, then you are only delaying the inevitable breakup to come.
Being in relationships and the ending of them is just a part of life. Let it serve it's purpose to teach you a lesson and move on. It would be nice if everyone lived by one code and one code only when dating: never marry or have kids with anyone you even suspect could be a potential mistake... unless, of course, it is a mistake you are willing to live with. Everything else is just having fun and the added bonus of being YDFC - Young, Dumb, and Fulla Cum.
