What are Relationship Goals? Relationship Goals is currently a cult favorite hashtag in the social media world. It's basically when people tag a photo of the kind of relationship they think is the #goal or highest standard of relationships they wish they had. So, what kind of relationship is your #RelationshipGoals?

If you're anything like me, you can't go a day without scrolling through your newsfeed and seeing someone post a photo with the #RelationshipGoals caption. Usually, these photos consist of girls holding a hundred roses, dates that look like they came from fairytale books, and gifts that are so beautiful that you can't help but feel a tinge of jealousy.

Let's be honest here, though, if these are your relationship goals, you're not ready for a real relationship and here's why. Real relationships are hard. They're messy. They're not out of a fairytale or romance novel. The photos we see tagged as relationship goals is everything wrong with today's mindset on relationships and a large part of why they don't last.

So what is real #RelationshipGoals? Here's what I think. It's sitting on the floor of an empty apartment with your significant other eating ramen noodles because that's literally all you could afford this week. It's the comfort of reaching out in the middle of the night and feeling their body next to you that makes even the worst days ahead seem like they'll be okay. It's the joy of holding your child for the first time and the amazement that you created something so beautiful together. And today, it's the heartbreak of saying goodbye to your whole world as they walk out the door for work and you don't know if they'll come back home tonight so you just sit and pray and hope the phone doesn't ring. But most importantly, it's sitting on the porch next to your life's partner of sixty years and thinking about how incredibly messy and hard and beautiful your lives have been together and how you wouldn't change it for the world. This is real relationship goals. Real relationships will take continuous time and work and effort and if you actually beat the odds, it may even last forever, now that's #RelationshipGoals.