Perfect. That’s a word that has a lot of meaning and weight in 2018. There is so much pressure for anything today to be considered perfect. Your body, clothes, hair, and skin have to be perfect to be considered attractive. You have to have a perfect 4.0 to be considered smart. Your partner has to be perfect, and your relationship has to be perfect in order to be healthy. I could easily get distracted and talk your ear off about the philosophy behind the idea of true love and the words “perfect” and “realistic,” but I promise you I won’t. I will simply be sharing my personal views on love and relationships with all of you lovely people.
Everyday I go onto Twitter or Instagram and see countless posts with the caption “relationship goals.” The posts are usually the same: either a couple cuddling or an extravagant gift that one has bought for the other, and to me it seems like a lot of people have an idea in their minds that gifts and photos of happy, attractive people make for a perfect relationship. That, my friends, is the idea of a perfect relationship. Personally, I believe that hanging out all day every day, sappy photos online with long captions, and being showered with gifts for no reason sounds more like a nightmare than a dream. That idea of a perfect relationship to me seems completely shallow and has a complete lack of substance.
However, I want to make it clear that this does not mean that I am anti-love or totally bitter about relationships by any means. I like to describe myself as a realistic hopeless romantic. I am all for love and finding that happy fairytale relationship, but I also am aware that that goal is extremely unrealistic. I believe that some people go into relationships expecting it to be happy-go-lucky and a constant stream of compliments, flowers, and heart shaped candies every day. And, while those things are nice and can be appreciated at times, (I mean who doesn’t want to be spoiled by their significant other SOMETIMES, right?) that idea is not realistic.
The mindset of searching for this type of relationship is, “when I think about you and me, it reminds me of that idea so you’re the one that I want”. Getting to know the person on a deeper level and then figuring out whether your personalities would mesh to form a healthy and loving relationship is how I believe a realistically perfect relationship should form. This mindset makes it a little harder for me to appreciate the honeymoon phase of a relationship, because to me, sappy and gooey means “fake nice”. Again, I am not against love.
I just believe that the “perfect relationship” is the one with the most emotional substance. The one that can stay strong through whatever issue it is faced with because there will most likely be a lot. No relationship is free of issues. Some couples choose to ignore them and never argue or fight to keep up the idea of being perfect and happy. But, the reality of the situation is that no two people are going to get along all of the time, and every relationship will face struggles. What makes them perfect is how they deal with said struggles and if they deal with them as a partnership rather than one person vs the other.
The REAL perfect relationship is the one that accepts that there will be issues and focuses on how they are going to fix them. The real relationship is one where both people can grow on their own in ways that will benefit themselves, their significant other, and the relationship as a whole. The real relationship is one that is not afraid to stray away from “relationship goals”. The real relationship is understanding and flexible. The real relationship is devoted to bettering the situation. The real relationship will be perfect for you.
The real perfect relationship will never be the same for any two couples. The real perfect relationship is constantly growing and changing. The real perfect relationship is the one that lasts.