Both men and women throughout the ages have based relationships on nothing shorter than 100% love, I’m sure even the prehistoric caveman and his wife must have had some hurdles to get through but not everyone who can dedicate themselves to “working” to save a relationship is successful! Everything around us changes, as do people and relationships partly due to personal growth or environmental factors, so what is the key to making a relationship “work”.

If you’ve been reading articles about how it’s compromise, trust, love, understanding and the rest of that mushy crap…get ready for a bombshell! The key to making a relationship work is YOU! Yeah, that’s right…it is you. No one can wrap up everything it takes and put a bright bow on it and for those of us who live in the real world, we know it’s hard.

One of the biggest problems is that people don’t have realistic expectations to begin with.

Some people don’t know what they want and they don’t even know that! It’s no one’s fault though, there’s no relationship model to go by and no one can copy a relationship from someone they admire, we get what we choose. A relationship isn’t a knight in shining armor riding on a white stallion, you can’t always save the day, every day will not be pure bliss, money doesn’t grow on trees, sex isn’t always a scream, chores do pile up and there’s even days when two people in a relationship nearly hate each other, so what holds it together?

At the end of the day, when it’s said and done, the answer to that question goes right back to the root; it is love.

Disagreements will come and go, bad days too but when you can look your partner square in the face knowing that you can live without them but at the same time knowing that you can’t—you know that you have something worth holding onto. That may sound strange but it’s true.

I heard someone say once that “love is the basis of understanding” and when you analyze that, it makes sense. Analyze it yourself and see what you come up with, you’ll be surprised at how such a seemingly meaningless phrase can impact your relationship if there’s one there.

The next time you question your relationship, the next time you have that big argument or the next time you feel like literally smackin’ your partner upside the head … feel the emotion, yell if you have to, stick to your guns on issues that really matter to you, compromise on the little things, embrace your differences, understand that this is today, tomorrow is another day, when problems arise just deal with what you can, share in responsibilities and when times get tough, stress is thick … just sit down and laugh together! If you love each other, these things should come easily without even trying because when you let your guard down amazing things can happen and sometimes love grows stronger when we least expect it.