Love doesn't have to be hard.

She made this for me a while back when I was having a hard time.

Maybe we are still in our honeymoon period.  Maybe its because we have both wanted this for so incredibly long.  Maybe its because I finally found The One for me.  Whatever the reason, all I know is that I am in the kind of relationship I have seen other people in and wondered if such relationships really existed.  I've had what I would consider good relationships in the past, as well as bad ones, but I'm not sure that love has ever felt this simple. 

It amazes me daily how different things are with L than they were with anybody before her despite similiar, and sometimes even more complicated, challenges to our relationship.  I don't think there is a need to go into those particular challenges but they are definitely there and a lot of them have to do with me and my baggage with C & R's dad.  Others have to do with her own adjustment from single life with a job to suddenly being a mother of two crazy, rambunctious, snuggly kids and being unemployed.  Even with all of this, she (most of the time) has seemingly endless amounts of patience, understanding, and kindness.

I may not feel the need to go into what things we do have to contend with on a daily basis (mostly because they are rather common or pretty personal), but I am happy to say that I am finally in a healthy relationship that has absolutely no power struggle to it.  I never feel like I'm being told what to do, I never feel like I'm being talked down to, and I never wonder if something I say is going to cause an explosive fight and leave me walking on eggshells for days.  I have my moments of uncertainty and panic where I worry that I've done something wrong but all it takes is a no-nonsense talk with L to be reminded that I am safe with her in every sense of the word and that even if I had done something wrong we would work through it and fix it instead of letting it hang over both of us and make life miserable for days.

I know that no relationship will ever be easy all of the time, but its nice to have finally found one that isn't hard most of the time.  It's a wonderful thing to have living, daily proof that love doesn't have to be a constant fight.  That it really doesn't have to be hard.