Not Your Goals

I have quite a few people that love my relationship. They love how we are around each other, they love the pictures we post and the status' of how grateful we are to have each other on bad days. What they don't know about are the days we can't seem to do anything but yell, the fifteen pictures we tried to take that did not make us look photogenic in the slightest and how a lot of the time, we forget to be thankful for one another and everything that is done for each other. What people don't know is everything that we don't post. Michael doesn't post about me when I wake up and randomly decide that he is going to irritate me all day no matter how sweet he is. But in return, I don't post about the days he's snippy with me because of a source outside our relationship that he doesn't want to talk about just yet. You don't know about these days because we don't let you know about them. But you also don't know about all of the good things, too. For example, none of you know how my heart feels after Michael and I can't stop laughing for fifteen minutes over the same stupid thing. Or the way my entire body is calm the second he wraps his arm around me right before we fall asleep. You also don't know how he saw the world in me when I wasn't proud of who I was. Or how I drive him to be a better person. I'm not writing this to say you don't know anything about us so you don't actually love our relationship, because that's not true. But you see what we want you to see, you don't see everything. So don't say we're your "goals" because you like how he kisses my cheek in pictures or "I'm jealous of your relationship" because of the way we boast about how wonderfully we're treated. Instead, set a standard for yourself. Don't wish to be like us, because when it comes down to it, we fight for a healthy relationship every single day. He has to watch his temper just like I have to continuously put my pride to the side when I owe him an apology. What I'm trying to get across is, nobody is perfect together, not effortlessly. You fight, you mold, you learn what flaws to love and what flaws need tweaking. You learn that he really cannot stand mayonnaise and he figures out that chocolate isn't expected (nor invited) on Valentine's Day. You will come to a point where you find out that loving someone doesn't make everything fall into place, that devotion to that person does. You also learn that just because something is in place for a while, doesn't mean that things won't slip up every now and again. Loving someone isn't work, but becoming the best version of yourself with the person you love definitely is. So don't label couples with "goals" instead set your own standards and find someone that you want forever that mutually will not give up on you.