Everyone has their own definition of what love is. Whether it's the way someone smiles at you in the day, a genuine curiosity in the question "How are you?" or simply a feeling you experience when that person is around you, it's difficult to put words to an emotion so boundless.

There's a special love between family and a unique love between friends; but, there's a certain love that only a partner can provide. With the compulsory nature of familial affection and the sometimes half-hearted interactions of friendship, it's easy to see why we place so much value in the unbiased and passionate emotions of a lover.

That certain love, in my life, has always been the feeling of safety with someone: comfort in knowing I don't need to mask my faults to feel accepted, solace in knowing that my words won't fall on indifferent ears, and assurance in knowing, that at the end of the day, I have someone to share my personal happiness with.

It's a liberating feeling to know that while the outside world is inherently noisy, your quiet world behind closed-doors isn't just you anymore. Your unedited thoughts, worries, and joys are now also a part of another person's world.

It seems counter-intuitive. We willingly walk ourselves into a state of raw vulnerability, inattentive to the possibility of regret and heartache, solely in pursuit of the reward we call love—and we do this because in the back of our minds, recalling the ultimatums we wage against ourselves every morning in the bathroom mirror, we know that wars are better fought when you're not alone.

Love is a question of who and why, but what most people seem to forget, is that love, at its core, is always a question of when. Everything in our lives is hostage to the serial killer we actively resent, yet acknowledge: time. Time has been, and always will be, our worst enemy. We're forced to accept that all things, good and bad, have their expiry date; and it's no different when it comes to the emotions we feel.

Just as time wears away at the foundations of a building, it will undermine the pillars that hold relationships together. There will always be an inevitable dilution in the excitement and romance between partners. What we feel so passionately for someone one day, might become a distant memory another.

But it's human to put so much meaning to something so temporary. We live our lives knowing that one day we'll be put under a tombstone, yet somehow, that makes every breath of fresh air that much more valuable. We take chances on relationships knowing they may end up leaving us in tears, but that makes the laughs we share that much more enjoyable.

It's a hard reality to anticipate, let alone accept, but that feeling will fade: people can change, and so can our feelings for them. This inherent volatility is the exact reason for why love won't cut it for a successful and long-lasting relationship. It's easy to fall in and out of love, but it's not so easy to stay in love, let alone maintain a lifelong relationship.

We try to circumvent the death of those emotions with the preventative medicine we've labeled as marriage. We subconsciously have come to accept that love isn't enough to keep our partner around, so we bind ourselves legally. It's a commitment—a personal promise we make in hopes of permanence in a persistently-dynamic world.

It's discouraging to hear the statistic that 40-50% of marriages end in divorce. While for many cases, these separations are consequences of a rushed marriage or just the collateral damage of extenuating circumstances, the rest often comes down to the disheartening reality that people give up too easily.

There's no such thing as a soulmate. Growing up, we're led to believe that there'll be someone perfect for us out there. But the reality is, of the 7.6 billion people on Earth, no one will ever be perfectly compatible for you. What is realistic to believe, is that there are people out there that are willing to both tolerate and appreciate you for who you are, because when it comes down to it, you can learn to love anyone.

Why is that? Someone shows us a small collection of common, but thoughtful gestures, and suddenly, we feel special. It makes us want to do the same for them because intuitively, our minds recognize that the basis of successful relationships is not a dependence on love, but a preparedness for sacrifice.

Everyone is quick to love when it feels right, but not always when it counts. While we won't always love our partner, we distinguish ourselves by the commitment we make to stick around. Love doesn't require sacrifice, relationships do—sacrifice to compromise through arguments, adapt to any changes in personality, and to take on the problems of our partners as our own.

What separates a 1-year long romance and a 50-year old marriage is the simple virtue of tenacity: the strength to say "I'm sorry" even when your pride stands in the way, the discipline to take a walk when things get heated, and the clarity to see why the phrase "You're not the person I fell in love with" is inherently naïve.

People will change. Whether it's looks or its personality, no one is ever the same person they were from a year ago, and to deny that simple reality, even from our partners, is an ignorant and unrealistic ideal. The phrase "stability in marriage" refers to a predilection towards withstandingchange, not a propensity for stagnation.

"Why be unhappy in a relationship when you can just move on to the next one?" Logically, this is the best mindset in a relationship where you feel mistreated, but if the sole reason for moving on is the idea of "I don't love you anymore," then what you're looking for is emotional excitement and not a lifelong partner.

We're allowed to choose which one to pursue in our lives. It's difficult to find the motivation to put effort into a relationship with someone you feel you don't love anymore. Eventually, most get tired and settle for stability in marriage. Life is what you make it, and by extension, a relationship is what you make it. Not to say we have complete control over what happens to us directly, but we do have some agency over what happens to our partners.

To put it to some simple math, most people gauge the success of a relationship as a ratio between the days they're happy and the days they're sad. Imagine there's an even split of good and bad days. Of those bad days, what percentage was your fault? What percentage did you sit by and do nothing? If the answer to both of those was more than half the time, then you're not trying hard enough.

Just like most things in life, stability comes down to hard work. There's no secret formula. Maybe a little bit of luck to find a person who can keep that 50-50 split or better, but the rest isn't up to chance, it's up to you.

In the end, I understand it's easy to doubt the credibility of a 20-year-old, marriage-less college student, but it doesn't take much to see that although people are complicated, the solutions to their problems don't have to be. Sometimes, it's as simple as making a promise and keeping it.

Relationships are a choice, and sometimes love isn't. We all have a lot more say in the success of our relationships than we think, but there will always be things beyond our control. It's rational to try and emulate the common traits of successful marriages, but ultimately, our stories are our own, and no number of paragraphs or idioms can ever pinpoint the secrets to happily growing old with the one you love.

Regardless of how logically you try to analyze emotions, despite how neatly you try to pigeonhole relationships' shortcomings, and no matter how discouraging the odds of a successful, long-lasting relationship might seem to you, somehow, love creates instances where you swear the rules don't apply to you, where you just know that you're the exception—moments where the words "I love you" can't help but make you feel invincible.