It was my first adult relationship—and it was as perfect as it could get.

Everything about our young love was beautiful. I remember the first time our eyes locked. The way he smiled when I said yes to a date. And the way he kissed me goodnight.

As our relationship progressed, it was what I imagined a love story to look like. We had passion, romance, and we were madly in love.

We spent every moment together. We were all in. We met each other’s families. We brought our friends together and formed a blended unit. We were building our lives and creating our future. We wanted forever.

Our relationship was also pretty intense. We loved super hard—but as hard as we loved, we fought just as hard.

We fought about everything and anything. I started to question everything about the relationship. Some fights were so bad that I started to doubt our love for each other. I wanted to run. Did our fighting mean we were all wrong for each other. That we weren’t meant to be together?

Some days, we fought about the weather or what we were making for dinner.

Other days we fought about more serious subjects like our futures and our hopes and dreams.

But there were also unnecessary fights about jealousy and insecurities.

We were hurt. We were angry. We were sad. We were pissed.

I was always yelling. He was always screaming. When we didn’t agree, and there were a ton of things we didn’t agree on, we fought.

But then our makeup was almost worth the fight. Those nights he held me so close, and the way he wiped away my tears. My love for him pounded through my chest as he looked into my eyes and opened his heart to me.

Despite our fights, we were still so in love.

Until one day we stopped fighting and I knew immediately that we were over.

We not only stopped fighting about the weather or what we were having for dinner, but we stopped talking about it all together.

Conversations about our futures started to deteriorate.

Discussions about our hopes and dreams began to separate.

He wasn’t jealous anymore. He didn’t care what I was doing or who I was doing it with. I could tell when he stopped asking me where I had been or who I was with.

I stopped looking into his eyes because I didn’t care what he had to say. The beat of my heart didn’t depend on him anymore.

He stopped holding me at night. And I didn’t even question it. We were strangers sleeping in the same bed for months.

And the yelling stopped all together because neither one of us cared anymore.

We had no reason to fight anymore.

Arguments, fights, and disagreements are healthy in a relationship.

It means we care about this person, and something they may have done, or didn’t do, affects the way we feel.

It shows we are both completely comfortable telling each other exactly how you feel. We are both owning up to our authentic selves. It’s easy to sit back and not stir up things in a relationship. But when we do that, we’re not being true to yourself.

It shows we are committed to each other. We’re willing to fight to stand up for ourselves and the relationship we cherish. It shows our devotion to each other.

We’re most likely never going to find someone we never fight with. We are all so different from the next, and with differences comes disagreements and arguments.

But it’s our responsibility to know the difference between healthy and unhealthy fights.

And we should always run from those unhealthy fights.

Healthy fights are done with care and consideration. Each party arguing their side and pausing to listen to the other person’s point of view. It’s a chance to learn the other person, to see into their world and bring bring both worlds together as one.

Healthy fights are done tastefully, without cruel insults or intentions. Calling him an asshat is okay. He probably is an asshat at times. And I think being called a b*tch is okay as well. Sometimes I can be a b*tch, and I know this and can admit it. But the healthy fights have a sweetness about them. You can tell the difference. You can feel the difference.

Healthy fights are worked out in time, or with the occasional agreement to disagree resolution and then it’s dropped.

And healthy fights almost always end in a loving makeup session.

Our fights weren’t what ended us. We were going to end regardless. We didn’t have that special magic to hold us together. If anything, those fights were what kept us together for as long as they did.

But that relationship taught me to embrace differences in all my relationships. Just because two people have differences, doesn’t mean that they are doomed. I can openly entertain those differences without judgement or ridicule.

It taught me that not all fighting is bad. As long as two people can fight lovingly and actively work toward finding a situation, we’re both growing in the process.

And it taught me how to compassionately fight for love because sometimes it’s the right love and it’s worth it.

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