Being Thankful of Relationships You Have to Work Hard For

What was the hardest relationship you have been in?

I have mentioned once or twice in this blog that I am engaged to be married. Of all the relationships I've been in, this is the one where I was – and am – the happiest. Oddly enough, this relationship is also the hardest I've ever been in.

The reason I said that is because fate must have thrown every possible challenge imaginable our way (so far). My fiancé and I are in a long-distance relationship; I live in Manila and he lives in Hawaii, thousands of miles away. The relationship is also interracial; he's Caucasian and I'm Asian. He's an atheist while I'm a non-denominational Christian. He's conservative while I'm probably a liberal. And we have a ten-year age gap, with me being the older one.

From the looks of it, we are two people who shouldn't be together. The LDR challenge alone is enough to drive anyone crazy. But here we are, after almost five years – still together, still committed to each other, and still going strong.

I'm not saying that we're the ultimate success story when it comes to dating and relationships. We are still working towards our happily ever-after and that one is a difficult day-to-day job. What I'm trying to say is that if there are couples like us who find keeping the love alive on a daily basis really hard work but are still together nonetheless, why are there couples who don't have the same level of difficulty in their relationships but couldn't make the relationship last anyway?

But maybe that's just it. People typically don't value something they got so easily and didn't work so hard for. They don't make that deep an emotional investment in that something to give it any value. And if one doesn’t have an emotional investment in something, it's all too easy to let go.

Maybe I'm lucky, then. I am fortunate enough to have been given something to work so hard for every single day. I certainly enjoy every minute of my relationship with my fiancé, even all the arguments we had over Skype and AIM. This relationship is something I worked hard for, and I'd be stupid to let it go away.

Did you have a relationship that you've worked so hard for? How did it go?

(Image: Click from MorgueFile)