Why do relationships fail?

I never brag about my girlfriend. I admire her deeply, I think she is the most incredible person in the world, and I do believe she is insanely gorgeous. I also never brag about our relationship. I know we have a strong relationship based on love, respect and communication. Also, I do believe our relationship is way more stable and healthy than others.

Now, I don't say this to brag, I'm not blind with love or neither think we're perfect. We have many flaws in our relationship too. We fight, we cry, we say bad things, we are childish sometimes and we do bad things. Like every relationship, I think.

But there's a huge difference between other relationships I know and ours. And I think the reason is because, even with our short age, we learned so much together about how to love each other in the right way. I don't know if we got lucky, but this is what I do know:

People think that "love" is just an emotion. It is, of course, but loving is so much more than that. It is an action. A decision you make. You might think that's a cold statement, but honestly, it is a fact. Loving someone is tricky, and a struggle. If it was just feelings, I'm pretty sure it will fade away with time, it will change, or you are going to develop same feelings for someone else.

Once you understand this, everything is easier. Because once you understand that you made the decision to love that person, you also have to take the decision to improve yourself and your relationship, to think through about it, to measure your actions. That is the only option.

At this point, I'm sure you're thinking that my way of "loving" is a cold mathematical motion. But I'll explain you why do I think this is true.

My girlfriend and I learned how to communicate while being vulnerable. We do fight, we do have misunderstandings and sometimes we say or do awful things. But we realized that we needed to be completely honest and vulnerable with each other about our feelings to solve those issues. It was the only way to improve our relationship.

So yes, we do fight, but then we come around and talk about it. It is not an "I'm mad but still sorry" thing. It is a conversation about how we felt and why we reacted that way. And we have to be very vulnerable to share insecurities, fears and bad habits.

It is not a rule for us, we just know that's what we need to do to move on. It took us a long time, but we learned how to do it. We, individually, make the decision to be vulnerable and honest with ourselves and each other to make this work.

We also learned how to be respectful. This one is always tricky and we are always learning. Because being respectul is not just avoid saying nasty things. It is about respecting privacy, and feeling, and thoughts, wishes, dreams, actions, space, time and so on.

I said it is tricky because sometimes when you're in a relationship like mine, you feel like you can have a voice or it is also your right to do something. Individuality is tricky in a relationship. And learning that you can't change someone and you shouldn't even try to do it, is very hard for humans. But that's the reality and once you learn to repect their individuality in that way, a lot of the figthings will disappear.

This is also not a rule. We just understand that crossing those lines hurts and it gets our relationship in troubles. It is easier to make the decision to respect your partner instead of putting your relationship on the edge.

Finally, we learned how to honestly say we're sorry and to forgive. Because even when we know all those things I already metioned, we still sometimes struggle with it. Like when we say or do bad things, when we cross the line, when we know we did wrong. But we quickly understood that saying and being sorry is not a weakness, and even when it is a simple word, it can change the way you feel, how your partner is feeling and how the situation is evolving.

More important, we learned how to truly forgive. Not only each other, but ourselves. It is the only way how we can stop feeling resentment, guilt or shame. It is the only way how we can move on.

This is not a rule on our relationship because you can't make someone to forgive you, but I think is a rule we have for ourselves. We both understand the power on forgiveness and how free can make you feel. Every time we have to, we make the decision to live on those positives feelings by forgiving and saying sorry instead of feeling miserable by not doing it or saying it.

On every situation, we make a choice. And every single one of them, it's taken while having in mind what's best for us, individually and together. But we don't make those things like an obligation. Again, they're not rules, we make it because we want it. And we do it because we love each other so much that we prefer doing all those things to get better and stronger. It is a reciprocate mechanism. It is not cold or mathematically. It is the way how love make us better human beings, and while learning how to be better we also learn how to love better.

I don't brag about my girlfriend or my relationship, but I do think we quickly figure out the three major keys to have a healthy and happy relatioship.

I read one time, "don't fall in love, rise in love". I guess we, without knowing, are doing that.

What are the things you guys do on a relationship to keep it going?

Btw, I'm sorry if I wrote something wrong. As I say on my previous post (https://goo.gl/pf8HRQ) I'm still working on my english