All relationships, no matter with your parents, friends, siblings or significant other, are going to have arguments and hard times. But it’s how we respond in those hard times that define us. I can only write about this subject, because I, too, am a girl who claimed to know what love is. I was selling myself on the idea of spending forever with someone, but never truly planning to spend forever with that person. I swore I knew what love was, and I swore to myself, my peers, my friends and my family that with everything in my body right down to the core of my very soul that I knew what love felt like. Boy, was I wrong. A relationship is a lot of things. It’s loving, it’s caring, it’s fun, its romantic, its wild, it’s trustworthy and it’s confident; however, there is a fine line between what a relationship is and what a relationship isn’t.

A relationship isn’t constantly wondering where you stand with another person.

A relationship isn’t having to go through their phone to establish trust.

A relationship isn’t spewing malice during a fight, or any other time for that matter.

A relationship isn’t constant cheating and flirting with other people.

A relationship isn’t a continuous cycle of being in love and indifference.

A relationship isn’t being with someone who makes you feel worthless.

A relationship isn’t a competition to be better than the other.

A relationship isn’t not being able to bring them around your family.

A relationship isn’t based off of power and control.

A relationship isn’t based off of lies.

A relationship isn’t ugly.

A relationship is beautiful.

A relationship is based off of love and commitment.

A relationship is having a close bond with your family and partner.

A relationship is giving as much as you are taking.

A relationship is being with someone who makes you feel like you’re priceless.

A relationship is a continuous cycle of patience and serenity.

A relationship is constant balance of friendship and freedom.

A relationship is spewing love, always, no matter how bad you may want to emit hate.

A relationship is being with someone who cares enough to build up your trust, and never have the audacity to tear it down.

A relationship is never forgetting where you stand, how much you are wanted and how much you are loved.

Relationships are not easy. They never have been, and they never will be. However, with the right person, it might just trick you into thinking it is. As Ann Landers once said, “love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.”

It took me a long time to realize that in order to even fully understand what love is, you have to put yourself above the others and learn to love yourself first. As cliché as it sounds, you truly just can’t love someone else without loving yourself first. There is someone out there looking for someone exactly like you. I sincerely and genuinely urge you to never ever settle. Be great. Do great things. Develop yourself into the person you want to be. You want to know what love is, and what it feels like? Turn to your very closest comrades (family, best friends). They are the ones who can show you what love truly is and how you’re supposed to feel.