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The Hard Work of Successful Love

Love is not singular, but plural

Romantic relationships are most satisfying and stand a greater chance of surviving when you and your partner view your bond without illusions and embellishments. When you do this, when you look love square in the face, you’ll find that it isn’t one simple, clear, obvious thing. Instead, love is complex. Love is triumph and heartache. It is passion and peaceful companionship. It is joy and grief. And keeping love alive is hard work. Some days, your love for your partner will take your breath away. On others, everything they do will annoy you. Most days, it will fall somewhere in between.

Romantic relationships endure because partners choose to communicate in ways that maintain their relationship. It’s the everyday communication and effort that you and your partner invest that will most enable you to build a satisfying, intimate bond—and sustain it if that’s what you choose to do. Enduring couples succeed at love by working at it day in and day out—helping each other with studying or the dishes, cheering each other with kind words following disheartening days at school or work, nursing each other through illness, and even holding each other close as one partner lets go of life.