As a 24 year-old man, I have been in a total of two love relationships.
One of them was sweet at the beginning and catastrophic at the end. Me and my partner corroded the ties that bound us, much like droplets of acid slowly falling on a metaphoric vein that binds two hearts. In the end, the love that used to travel in the veins leaked out; two damaged human hearts, now severed from each other, were left to heal by themselves.
The other relationship, which I am currently on, is one of my utmost achievements in life, even it isn't meant to last forever.
Why? What are the differences that make one relationship work while others do not? Well, there are the trivial, boring explanations that everyone knows and can enumerate: people have different personalities, different habits, different backgrounds, different sensibilities and dispositions. You will find the one, many people say. It is, of course, possible to find someone that fits quite well your own lock in this respect; to find a key in a myriad of keys that fits what you think is an exquisite, unique lock; or to find a lock in a myriad of keys, for those who like to think in less egotistical terms. It is not untrue that some people have a stronger glue to their interactions than others.
But locks and keys rust; glue wears out. They oxidize; they degrade. Routine and repetition and distance and time pour acid onto the ties that bind the hearts, onto the metal that is the very scaffold of the relationship. It's not only people's own defects and tastes and personalities that determine the success of insuccess of the relationship; time and experience itself generally tend to corrode human bonds.
The reason as to why I think my current relationship is worth so much is not because my girlfriend is the perfect fit in the lock and key sense I talked about. We have some ideas in common, for sure, but in other respects we are not alike at all and we disagree in several issues. We argue and get mad from time to time. We've had some deep downs which I was not sure we could overcome - we did though. In most respects, we are like every other couple.
The main reason why I value my relationship so much is that each one of us does not depend on the other in any fundamental way. We did not create love between ourselves. We had love and we chose to share it with one another and it grew into a new, ever stronger sentiment. We had confidence and we chose to share it with one another - it grew stronger in each of us. Before our hearts were bound to each other, they were bound to other things as well; to other people, to other desires, other motivations and drives and dreams; but most of all, they were bound to our own personalities through self-awareness and consciousness.
Our own individuality is what made the relationship so good. It is precisely the realization that she can do things without me, that she does not require my approvation or effort, that makes me want to make the effort. She does not require nor wants me to make her a sandwich everyday for her to take to work - but I want to do it. She would be happy to do it herself though. If she needed me more than anything in the world, if I needed her more than anything in the world - it would fall apart. Yet, it is almost paradoxical that this same independence of ours is the fabric that connects us so strongly.
Each time corrosion threatens, each time acid drops, we work against it; we have enough self-love and confidence to do so; we share those with one another. We do not require something from the other that we don't already have; we don't project our own insecurities onto each other; we did not wait for one of us to accept faults in the other. We were never static people; each of us knew that we had faults and that some faults affect both the health of the individual and the lover's. We proceeded to eliminate them, for our betterment. It healed us individuality and, by consequence, it improved the relationship. We also did not and do not care more about our ego than the relationship itself - I'm sorry slides out of the mouth fairly easily, without the strong chains of egoism pushing it down the throat.
This disposition of ours, in my opinion, is exactly what is necessary to counterbalance the eroding waves of time and repetition and boredom. It is not a formula for everlasting love - love does not last forever, because time and death still exist. But, bit by bit, it strives to replace the wasted metal. It maximizes the finite experience. It renews the caustic ties that bind most human relations.