The kind of love that lasts a lifetime is both unflinching and forgiving. It weathers infidelity. It does not hold up the other person to an impossible standard. It allows room for mistakes, and it has the courage to stick by your partner when they make them, and help them come back from the brink. It puts “doing what’s good” over insisting on what’s “right.” It admits no entitlement. It does not give up easily.

It demands the disappearance of the ego. It demands great humbleness, and great strength. It withstands more than you ever thought you could bear, and while it may buckle, it does not fall.
It does not think of itself as a fairy tale.

It can come through years of painful conflict, where you never know if you are going to make it to the next day let alone “forever,” but you keep on one foot in front of the other, and somehow you come out the other side.

It requires effort and commitment to keep alive. It requires a solid basis of like and respect for the other person to last. It can regenerate, but it is not bulletproof. Most couples who’ve been together 20, 30, 50 years will tell you there were times when the love died. Life is hard, and love can be so ephemeral. Lifelong love is what you get when you don’t give up on each other just because of that. Like and respect is what keeps you going when the love dies—commitment is what keeps you working on it—until it can come back again, rising its head from the snow. Lifelong love demands faith that the roots are always there, and salvageable, no matter how withered the bloom. It demands the determination to nurture its plot even when all you can see is scorched or frozen earth.