So you fall in love.  All of the dreaming and wishing and praying and you find the one and the fairytales are suddenly an accurate interpretation of your life and all of the songs on the radio make sense.  You fall in love hard.  So fast, so deeply, that breathing is difficult and you honestly have to think about and remember how your body used to breathe before you fell.  Everything is dreamlike and magical; the air is fresher, the sunshine warmer and somehow brighter, the rain is even joyful, and the cold is more of an excuse (as if you need one) for physical proximity.  Every second away from your love turns into an eternity.  Time stops when you are together and the struggles of the outside world fade away.  Life becomes easier and stress fades away and suddenly problems outside your relationship do not exist.  Happiness is the only real thing and all that matters is this moment with him.

Time passes and this love becomes less severe and less novel.  The once thrilling moments of seeing one another after two hours apart turn into just simple "hey, was traffic bad?"   Suddenly, all that was fresh, new, and extraordinary becomes mundane.  The flutter of butterflies in your stomach becomes an ordinary sensation and your body becomes desensitized to the once burning touch of your lover.  Life and even love becomes ordinary.

How do you keep the spark that every old couple that has been together for a hundred years says they still have?  Does "the spark" really last or is it just that you have become so ingrained into his being that he can not imagine going a day without talking to you?  How do these everyday experiences of just seeing one another suddenly become commonplace?  As a girl, I want my lover to see me as the most extraordinary piece of art and flesh he has ever seen in his life.  I want him to think of me and only me, despite my flaws.  I want to continue to be amazing.  How do I keep being amazing when there is always the novelty of new?  There is always someone prettier or more physically fit or more comfortable in her own skin.  How is a girl supposed to compete with that?

And finally, how do you know when to call it quits?  How do you know when the fighting that has become such a part of your relationship has finally come to the point when the problems are too big to deal with?  How do you say, with such confidence, this relationship has run its course and there is nowhere else to go but in separate directions?  How do you say goodbye to your best friend and your lover, the person who knows more about you than anyone else has ever before?  It simply comes down to, I still want to be with you in your life, hanging out with you every single day but our relationship is no longer worth it so where do we go from here?

We have all seen the great romantic movies or read the epic romances where couple goes through an extreme ordeal and overcomes monumental obstacles.  When the obstacles are small and ordinary how is anyone supposed to even see them growing greater?  How do you fight obstacles that were once just differences in personalities?

All at once, you wonder if you even miss the one who used to hold all of your attention and all of your heart.  Moments away become breaths of fresh air and moments together are just sharing the same space, almost interacting.   All at once, you wonder if you are just together because you are used to being together, you are accustomed to his habits and schedule and you are so much a part of his life and he is so much a part of yours that life without him is unimaginable.  All at once, you wonder at what point the problems became bigger than the need to be together and all at once, you are breathing on your own more and more.  Apathy has crept in and taken over where passion used to be.  Physical attraction is all that is left but without an emotional connection it may as well be anyone, not the man who used to be your oxygen.

Love has lost its luster.   Suddenly, minutes, hours, and even days can go by without seeing one another and sharing only short, awkward conversations for moments when conversations used to last for hours on the way towards one another. Where did it all go wrong?

Where do you go from here?  Do you fight for what you know in the relationship that you have become so accustomed to or do you just let it go with your apathetic mentality knowing the problems have just gotten too big to overcome?  The person you once saw as your ever after has just become a persons struggling to have a good life as well, not necessarily in your same general direction.  Perhaps you were foolish in planning the distant future too soon.  You jumped the gun and this is the result.  People said there would be hardships but no one said they would be this simple and complex all at once.