When deciding to write this, I had a hard time deciding how to approach this.

See, millennials, including myself, have a hard time figuring out the secret to love. How a couple finds that perfect love, have a family, and eventually grow old together.

We search and yearn for that feeling but confuse it with short-termed happiness. Here is my definition of love that I’ve observed to be true to myself.

To me, love is an emotion that shouldn’t disappear. I feel like if one falls out of love, then they never really loved in the first place. Sure, they fell in love, but they didn’t truly love. They said their ‘I love you’ for a month and lived in that bliss and happiness, but then realized it wasn’t what they wanted.

Love lasts. When you love someone, you really know it because everything about them is shown to you from a new perspective. You love everything they were, are, and will be. You love the future they have planned for themselves. You love the double chin they get when they’re looking at their phone. You love hearing about their life, and most importantly, you stand by them when things aren’t so pretty. You want what they want, and if you don’t you work your hardest to find a way around it.

Love isn’t controlling. I believe that you really don’t love the person when you tell them they can’t talk to certain people, can’t tell them where to go and what to do. A relationship isn’t one bossing the other around in a manipulative way that causes misery and fights. Of course, there are relationships where one person is more headstrong than the other, and that’s normal, but there’s a line that many crosses. A line they believe they must cross because they “love” their boyfriend/girlfriend and want to make sure they stick around.

Being in love and loving someone are two different things. When you’re in love, you’re in love with the idea of it. You love how your relationship looks to other people. You love posting about it every second and telling people how happy you are. There’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes the façade gets out of hand and you won’t show how your relationship actually is.

And how is it really? That’s not up to me to decide. I had a relationship like that once. I loved how we looked together on Instagram and out in public, and I loved it. I didn’t love how he spoke to me and treated me behind the scenes, and how he treated other people. I loved the idea of not being alone and having the idea of a boyfriend I could show off, but I didn’t love him.

Love isn’t perfect. No relationship is perfect no matter how hard people try to make it.

We millennials work hard to find that love but are swept up in the imagination of a life with a house, kids, dog, house, and a perfect relationship. We want that so bad that we rush into love without thinking of the after-effect. The after-effect being that misery is the center of your relationship, but you two are so determined to have someone so you just put up with it. You don’t want to find that love because love is harder and takes longer, and pain is involved.

Love doesn’t happen in 10 days like Kate Hudson says it does. Love is work, but most importantly it’s worth it.