Relationships are a commitment with another person you find more significant than yourself. It is a selfless act that puts your partner before yourself. What makes a relationship worth the time and effort is the mutual understanding and exchange of thoughts, words, and actions while noting the differences that rest between each other.

Emotions should be expressed, discussed, and of course respected but a relationship shouldn't become a therapy session, or one void of romance, all the time. The balance lies between woman's tenacious charm and man's obstinate routine.

Traditional relationships will treat couples as men and women but dating culture today feels less consequential, if not responsible, and the selfish irony is that a relationship only matters when it affects one partner over another without the other's complete knowledge. The expectations of a woman should not be so different from the expectations of a man if it means being with each other.

The problem for men and women is that their expectations fall short of reality because they attempt to be a fantasy. No man and no woman wants to be any older than they will be and there's nothing wrong with maintaining your boyhood or girlhood. For a relationship to develop well and good, there has to be a certain level of genuine, reciprocated maturity.

Ladies, no matter how hard you try, he's not going to be a swimsuit model from a cologne commercial that gets you. Guys, she's not going to be a sex-crazed cheerleader that prepares your every meal.

What we have in mind for the ideal partner is always going to be a smidgen of that fantasy, if at all. Fantasy is superficial desires you see in your partner that can never be true unless that partner is willingly or unknowingly superficial.

Luxuries too often are confused with priorities which is the moment someone becomes careless, superficial, and selfish. To enjoy luxuries, you have to fulfill your priorities, otherwise you will suffer the consequences that come from putting luxuries first and priorities last whether you're ignorant of those consequences or not.

Respect and romance cannot be faked. If they are, the way one siphons someone for his or her benefit will show. This is not a relationship and is a selfish, one-sided relationship at the very least. Women and men either misconstrue or confuse respect as romance, romance as respect, or some other definition of each by mistake.

Romance is knowing what you want and is a sentimental endeavor. Respect is knowing what you need and is a reasonable endeavor. Women are more capable of romance or asserting their feelings and understand respect as a result of romance. Men are more capable of respect or doing what is practical and understand romance as a result of respect.

Women think romance is respect or a need while men think respect is romance or a want. Both can teach the other what they're missing but it does not happen without acknowledging that respect and romance work in tandem, are separate, but strive for the same goal that is a relationship.

Respect does not mean appeasing the personality of your partner. Romance does not mean giving into wishes in spite of yourself. There is no romance without first introducing respect and one cannot expect to receive respect when romance is hurried and expected first.

To balance respect and romance, men and women must turn expectations into mutual as well as individual and reciprocated cyclical goals to ensure the idealized becomes the realized.

A relationship built on respect and romance is requited love. Once that's established, there's nothing you won't know about or can't expect from each other.