Whether you are with someone for six months or six years, no matter the time you are together, love is hard. It will test your patience, make you happy, drive you insane, and everything in between.

Sorry to spoil it for you, but love is not all the Hallmark movies tell it to be.

The harsh reality of it is that love is a battle. I get it, you hear all the time that a healthy relationship doesn't leave you second-guessing and wondering where you stand. That's almost true: A healthy relationship, in fact, does involve a lot of second-guessing, only to come back and realize that, yeah, you are definitely meant to be together.

It took that introspection, no matter how daunting it is at the time, to realize that you can push through everything and try to be better together.

You will have so many instances, no matter the relationship length, where you will wonder if this is truly right for you. You will wonder if there is better out there and wonder if this is the one for you, the right person, your future spouse. You might have moments, mid-conflict, where you think you have fallen out of love, only to feel an outpouring of it the next day when the dust has settled.

That is normal. Trust me.

Relationships aren't perfect. they involve deep talks that turn into conflict just as much as they involve deep talks that turn into declaring unending love. They involve petty, easily solvable disagreement just as much as they involve horrendous ones. They involve happiness and understanding, but they involve discontent and insecurity, too.

The point of all of this is simple: Understand that love is not simple.

Even if your significant other is The One, I'm sorry, but nothing will never, under any circumstances, be perfect.

It requires a commitment to sticking with it, staying together even through the harshest of storms, only to come out together in the end.

There is no simple equation for a happy relationship. Realizing that conflict will arise and dealing with it maturely when it does has everything to do with a healthy relationship.

There will be days when you don't want to be together, but never forget why you fell in love in the first place.