A week ago, my girlfriend and I celebrated our six-month anniversary. We reflected on how far we've come and how we've grown together as a couple. My girlfriend and I have had a lot of fun experiences together. We're pretty happy when we're around each other, with a couple of roadblocks. We treat each other with support, listen to each other, and celebrate each other.

But we both still have a lot of individual problems, whether they're personal or professional. We are both Baltimore City teachers in inner-city schools, so we deal with a lot of students who have experienced a lot of trauma. Personally, I still struggle with issues and conflicts within my family. I feel like a bad brother or son for being relatively absent from struggles people in my family are dealing with -- simply because I am constantly overwhelmed at work.

Just because I am in a relationship doesn't mean my problems are fixed. In fact, my problems are more or less the same -- I just have more support to deal with them.

My relationship has progressed substantially when my girlfriend and I first started dating. In the words of Mélanie Berliet of Thought Catalog, "Lust eventually dissipates. When it does, it's replaced by comfort, shared experiences, more and more treasured memories." But a progression in a relationship also comes with not-so-romantic aspects, and Berliet includes "fighting, jealousy, temptation, doubts, and relationship fatigue."

Unconditional love doesn't mean that love is always sweet and comfortable. Unconditional love is a covenant kind of love, where you work through and work past your problems.

Love and relationship also have limits, and one of those limits is the inability of love to solve all of our problems or even transform our life. According to Berliet, a romantic relationship won't make us different people or solve all of our problems -- the relationship can create additional problems. As good as relationships can be, more likely than not, they're a mixed bag.

A relationship is not a band-aid for all of our personal and emotional problems.

It's natural that we want relationships to be transcendent phenomena that fix everything. For some of us, our relationships and marriages make life worth living and give us meaning. We feel like something is wrong when we're still anxious or depressed when we have a perfectly good relationship. However, a relationship can fix us. We have to fix ourselves.

As a Christian, I believe that Christ heals and fixes, not ourselves. But even if you're not a Christian, putting all your cards in a relationship to heal or fix you is making a relationship your idol. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols," John tells us in 1 John 5:21. When we expect another person to be God, we're putting unfair and unreachable expectations on others, which is actually bad for relationships.

My girlfriend and I have boundaries that prevent us from seeing our relationships as idols. Although we communicate very well, we don't see each other every day, and we don't spend every waking moment with each other. We prioritize our time we need to be alone and time we need to spend with other friends. We do not find our identity in our relationship, but rather in ourselves and our faith.

When I was single, I longed for a relationship. I longed for a partner to share experiences with and at some level, I was jealous of my friends that did. My past ones were short and fizzled out, so I never experienced what it was like to be in a long-term one. I was searching for magical healing to come out of being with someone and in a relationship. For a while, I was the clingy partner that didn't always want space and strived to spent way too much time with my girlfriend.

Now that I'm in a committed relationship, my life has improved and I feel more whole, but by no means is everything fixed or healed. In fact, the relationship is also a lot of work. I spend a lot more money now than I used to. "Being in a relationship should never be about someone else's love being a Band-Aid you put on all your personal demons," writes Daren W. Jackson.

So a relationship will give you someone to traverse life's problems with. It'll allow you not to be alone -- but it won't fix your problems. It won't heal you. That's work that is a disservice to expect from a partner. You have to do it yourself.