Everything I Want To Say To Girls Who Settle In Their Relationships

This has been tugging at my heartstrings for a while now and I'm finally brave enough to put it out there. Without trying to sound like a therapist, marriage counselor or all-around raging lunatic, I'll break the news to you all: Healthy relationships and marriages do still exist.

There. I said it.

It's something that's been on the tip of my tongue for so long now, mostly because I see so many of my friends and family members struggle with this daily.

Their relationship with their boyfriend sucks, yet they still keep hanging on to that burning rope like their precious life depends on it. Or, their marriage is in shambles because their priorities are more out-of-whack than Miley Cyrus' wardrobe, but they're still hanging on.

Is this really the norm we've created? Is this what we honestly think relationships and marriages are supposed to look like? It bothers me.

I'll be the first to admit it. I grew up with divorced parents and honestly never had a good example of what a real marriage should look like. I didn't have #relationshipgoals to look up to. I didn't have that sweet dad who bought my mom flowers for no good reason, or that mom who still smacked my dad's ass after 30 years of marriage.

So, how did I end up in a marriage that most deem as relationship goals? I had no basis for this, no family history of healthy relationships and I most certainly didn't just fall into this fairytale by some magical stroke of luck. (Because if we're talking luck, that's something that swerves me harder than a baby daddy who's three months late on child support payments.)

But, you know what I did do? I didn't settle until I found a person who fed my soul, who made me a better person than I could ever dream of being by myself and who treated me like I was the rarest crystal he could find on this entire planet. Because, you know what?

I finally realized that I deserved nothing less than that.

We were taught lessons on self-worth in elementary school guidance class, but it's a lesson that clearly didn't stick for most of us. Knowing your self-worth is crucial. Knowing that by yourself, you are completely, 110 percent whole is so, so, important.

You are perfectly created and you are worthy of nothing less than that person I described above. Know that. Always know that and always remember that. And until you find someone who treats you like the badass that you are, do not settle. I repeat, do not settle.

We settle for a lot of things in life. We settle for jobs we don't really want, we settle for a price on a new car because we're too impatient to search for a better deal and we settle for a less-than-mediocre score on a college admissions test because we're too lazy to take it again.

We settle.

Maybe I sound biased because you think I don't settle -- like I'm some kind of super human or something. Maybe I sound biased because I just described my marriage like it's something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. Or, maybe you think I never went through that searching phase or that I have always known my self-worth.

And, just maybe, you're wrong about every single bit of that.

You search, you learn from your mistakes, you dig for more answers and most of all, you keep moving until you find someone in this big world who's worthy of you. If you didn't pay attention to that in elementary school, please take note now.

Don't settle.