Growing up, I never heard my parents or grandparents fight.

I lived with both my parents and grandparents in one household and the majority of my days were spent watching Disney movies and reading Nicholas Sparks novels after my grandma had finished them. When I got older, I started to notice how my household was slightly different from my friends' homes in the way that I had never heard a single fight or any voices raised in my household. Some of my friends recognized that and would tell me that fighting is healthy in a relationship—science has proven it.

I have to say even though science may be on the side of fighting, I have been proven in over 18 years of life that fighting is never the answer and you can lead a successful relationship without fighting. The key is to agree to disagree on the subject rather than allowing it to tear the relationship apart.

When I was 15, my parents started allowing me to go on parental supervised dates (I wasn't allowed to go on solo dates until I was 16 for safety reasons). My mother sat me down one night and told me the story of her relationship with my dad. You see, my parents have been together ever since their late teens and have now been married for over 33 years. They survived every trial and error, every high and low, by modeling their relationship after my grandparents.

My grandparents got married in college at Indiana University and had been together since they were 14 and 15 (they have been married for over 61 years to date). They said long before that they never wanted to fight over anything because every person on this planet was made to be different. One person's opinions will differ from another person's opinions; the key is to recognize those differences rather than starting a fire that shouldn't be started in the first place. They decided in times where their opinions differed they would agree to disagree and later my parents chose that model, as well.

When I met my current boyfriend, Alex, I told him very early on about agreeing to disagree. He was never a fan of fighting and is just as emotional of a person as I am, so we were very much in agreement that fighting would never be the answer for us. Science likes to say that if we fight fire with fire, it releases any anger we may have towards a certain person or subject.

However, every person was designed to be different. Even if a person finds their soulmate or their perfect match, that person will never be the same exact person as them. Every human being has learned through their own lives and experiences what they choose to believe is right for them and what they believe is wrong, so attempting to force opinions on someone else is rather pointless.

Alex and I have been through this, as well as my parents and grandparents, and each one of us can easily say that agreeing to disagree saves time, effort and feelings in the end. You can easily have a healthy relationship through respecting one another's opinions and realizing your differences instead of creating a false version of another person. If you truly love another person and they love you back, nothing, not even opinions, should ever come in between that love.