It Takes A Hell Of A Lot More Than Love To Make A Relationship Last

I love wine, but it destroys my liver. I love pizza, but it makes my hips wider. I love him, but he makes me cry.

There are lessons we all wish we would never have to learn and one of them is that sometimes, we can fall in love with someone who is no good for us, someone who doesn't belong in our lives.

Between Disney, Jane Austen and Nicholas Sparks, you might start to think that love could accomplish anything; that it could cure the sick, change the past and save the world. Unfortunately, in real life, this just isn't so.

When we love a person, we don't want to see his or her faults. We are inclined to forgive even the most egregious of crimes against us; in fact, we even begin to make excuses for them. He had a bad day, so it's okay that he is treating me this way.

She is tired, so its okay that she never helps out. He didn't mean to cheat on me — he just had a weak moment — a bunch of weak moments. I love them, so I'll try to forgive them.

I once loved a boy who made me cry more than he made me smile. He was charismatic and could make me laugh. He was strong on the outside and mush on the inside.

We never saw eye to eye, but we definitely felt heart to heart. But, even though I loved him with every fiber of my being, we still lost everything. In the beginning, I thought I could fight for us forever, that our love was worth any cost.

But as time went by, I learned that there was a cost I couldn't afford to pay. Three years later, I packed my bags and left, knowing that I had to stop loving him more than I loved myself.

The cycle of being hurt by someone and then forgiving wares on you until eventually, there is nothing left to ware. There will be good days when you will feel truly happy with each other.

But, are they worth all of the bad days? Can you wake up again and handle the uncertainty? The possibility that today could be another bad day?

There are a finite number of days that we all have to live, to love, to make our dreams come true. Time is not to be wasted crying in our pillows at the hands of anyone, especially someone who says that he or she loves us.

You may love drugs, but they could still kill you — it's time to stop taking them before its too late.

The last thing you want is to wake up in five, 10 or 20 years only to realize that you can't do it anymore; that you cant take another bad day. You could have spent those years being happy, chasing your dreams, having a successful career, loving someone who could love you back without hurting you.

Love is a wonderful, powerful thing, but at the end of the day, loving someone won't change the fact that the person is a toxic component to your life. Breaking up and moving on is scary.

There will always be the fear that this love is it, that we will never find anything or anyone to make us feel the same way. But, we must be strong enough to know that we will be okay, that we cant stay with a person just because we love them.

Being in love is not enough to make a relationship work or last; it takes more than that. It takes trust and communication and empathy. It takes two people who are willing to give more than they take every day.