It’s February and love is in the air.

Barb and I celebrated our anniversary last week, and Valentine’s Day is next week. During this season, there is a lot of reflection on where we have been and where we are going – as individuals and as a couple.

There are lots of different ways to love and to be loved. There are lots of different ways to be in relationship. Our story is just one of many that could be written, one of the many that are being written by people all over the world every day.

The one through line of all these relationships is that love is beautiful. And love is also very, very challenging. It is hard to be in any relationship. There is something about balancing the needs and wants of independent people that is especially difficult. We humans bring all sorts of stuff into our interactions with one another and that creates all sorts of new reactions. How we manage these reactions (or fail to manage them) goes a long way to determining the quality of relationships in our lives.

The truth is every relationship has conflict and struggle. Our relationships with friends, with parents, with siblings, with co-workers… all of them must overcome hurt, disappointment, fear, discord, and disagreement. The last year or so, Barb and I have had our most challenging time as a couple. And that’s saying a lot given all that we have gone through.

There comes a time in every relationship where you must make a choice. You have to decide whether the connection you have with someone is strong enough, important enough, or valuable enough to overcome all of the hard stuff that can surround it. Is the juice worth the squeeze? The way you answer that question guides your next steps.