Just like you don’t just put on a black outfit and suddenly find yourself silent of movement, unnoticed and able to scale any wall, you don’t enter a relationship, and suddenly know how to grow and maintain it in a healthy way.

Society’s stories around romance and a decided lack of practical education paint a picture very similar to that: You’ll meet “THE ONE,” and it will magically happen.

Or, as I mentioned in a post earlier this week, you just have to want it enough—maybe pray for that perfect partner.

And society also teaches us that a relationship is a magical escalator with marriage and building a family at the pinnacle of goodness and right as the “finish line,” completely disregarding that more than half of your life may come after you’ve gotten married, and maybe more than half of your life changes as well. Or that you may never marry. Or that your might get divorced, or lose your spouse, or choose to marry and have another life partner or several…

The reality of relationshipping is that it is an ongoing skill.

• Meeting people is a skill.
• Connecting with people is a skill.
• Dating is a skill.
• Creating love for and with another is a skill.
• Maintaining love through hurts, disappointments, and LIFE is a skill.
• Communication is a skill.
• Knowing yourself so you know what to communicate is a skill.
• Growing together while maintaining personal boundaries is a skill.

If you want an amazing relationship, you need to constantly hone your skills. Use them or lose them.

Whether you are searching for a relationship, building a new one, improving an existing one, or have an awesome connection already, you can never stop putting in the time and effort, or you’ll lose what you have from entropy.

It won’t take much, if you’ve not put in the effort.

I can be easy to put love/romance on the back burner because we tell ourselves it’s not necessary for survival.

You wouldn’t give up in pursuing a career or a means of making money?

Why? Because you gotta fucking eat to survive.

And you gotta fucking love to thrive.

Make love just as important in your life. Put in the kind time to learn about and develop love that you do to better yourself for work and career, so you can learn to live full out for YOU and not just bill collectors, clients, and other things you feel obligated to.

Treat it like an exercise. Every day.

It is absolutely important to work on yourself and love yourself.

And part of that is being an empowered ninja-kinkster-lover that sets boundaries instead of building walls… who boldly steps into the dating/loving world and can open your heart to both giving and receiving.

If it’s not THE most important thing in life… it’s easily at least top 5 or 6 (and air, food and water take up three of those top spots).

So act like it. Prioritize it.

Be a relationship ninja.