I am madly in love with my boyfriend. His name is Mart. We are more than 3 years and 9 months into our relationship and even to this morning, I woke up missing him and feeling fuzzy, happy feelings because he is in my life. Last night we videochatted (on Skype, awesome program we have replaced our phone calls with because we always have difficulty with hearing and reception with our cell phones) for probably 2-3 hours after midnight because I was feeling frustrated with my Saturday night. I had physics homework due online at midnight and I only managed to get 20 out of 23 points on homework that I thought was really difficult.

So the videochat I had with him was supposed to let me vent about physics and school, and eventually just make me feel better. And it did, like it does most of the time. When we’re not fighting, my nighttime conversations with him are the best. We stay up until we’re ready to pass out.

I have a bad temper as well as a fastidious personality while he has a habit of being inconsiderate or just acting before thinking sometimes. Put us together and you have a couple that ends up fighting a lot. But at the end of the day (or two days if it’s a serious fight) everything is out of the way and the storm has blown over. Sometimes we both realize how stupid we both were about a situation, and if we had approached it another way we would have been laughing and cuddling rather than crying and being angry at each other. Sometimes, we remain upset for a good portion of time, but with enough time, talking it out, and apologies, we are okay again because we don’t want to lose each other.

I’ve only been in one relationship before him, and he’s been in none before me. That fact scares me sometimes because it makes me realize how young and inexperienced we are, but we both desperately want each other to be “the one.” And although that scares me I am a firm believer in that if two people really love each other and have the desire to work hard to keep their relationship going, they can do it. Love is actually very simple, if you strip away all of the hardships and obstacles life throws at you. I believe in two requirements: 1) The two people must end up loving each other equally and 2) They must work equally as hard in keeping the relationship alive and strong. As long as you have those two things, I think you can still hold on to each other, despite life’s difficulties.

Granted, that’s how I felt about my first boyfriend and I felt like dying after he broke up with me, but my belief aforementioned was not proven wrong. He just didn’t love me back the same and didn’t want to try as hard to keep us together. Ever heard of that saying, “Thanks for breaking up with her because now I found the love of my life”? I kind of have always wished my current boyfriend would say that to me and he never has, but even without telling me I think he does feel that way about me.

I just feel incredibly amazed at after nearing 4 years of being together, I still get the same heart flutterings as I did when I first had a crush on him. The only difference now is the deeper feelings of love and care accompanied with my heart flutterings. I share so much with him (memories, dates, family, serious conversations, silly conversations, intimacy, concerts, movies, dramas, games, school, food, the list goes on), and while it feels like my life is complete, at the same time it never feels enough. It doesn’t feel enough because I’d like to share even more with him in the future.

I have “rose-tinted glasses” on right now, but they’ve also been colored with a bit of black from the sorrows I’ve encountered. For the most part, however, what I see through my glasses are beautiful rose-colored images. I hope that someday I will never have to take them off, or at least if I ever have to, I can still see glimpses of that brilliant rose color everywhere I go.