My key to a healthy relationship

I think it's important for people to know that no relationship is perfect. Mine included. I personally am not one to post negative things on social media. This doesn't mean that I am trying to pretend my life is perfect. I just happen to be an optimist and prefer to share happy moments.

But I want you to know that I too have unhappy moments. Mine and Jairo's relationship is far from perfect, like most relationships are. Yes we are together and yes we love each other but we have had our fair share of arguments and disagreements. When we first got together we were 14 and 17 years old. On top of being immature, we got pregnant. This is a terrible mix.

The summer of 2010 was hard for us. I was pregnant and sitting at home because I hadn't told any of my friends I was pregnant. But Jairo still had friends. He was a teenage guy. He didn't want to sit at home with his pregnant girlfriend all the time. So he would go out with his friends, who didn't like me by the way. It was frustrating. We fought a lot. He even had the audacity to tell one of his friends I was pregnant. I hadn't told any of mine and we agreed to keep it a secret but he did it anyways.

That summer he did so many things that frustrated me. I cried a lot. But I truly did love him. So I just kept forgiving him. That doesn't mean I forgot what he did. I kept those issues with me for a long time. Then we fought some more and at one point I didn't think we were going to last. That's when my parents sat us down and gave us a lesson in making a relationship work. The secret to my parents healthy, loving, 25 year relationship is that they communicate. So this is what they taught us to do.

We talk about our problems. Yes it is frustrating and we argue. But the reason we are still together today is because we talk to each other. My parents taught us to communicate. This is our saving grace in our relationship. Our secret to staying together is communication. When people in a relationship keep their feelings bottled up it isn't healthy for either of them.

When Jairo does something that irritates me I tell him that it irritated me. Because if I tell him then he knows what I'm feeling and he can change it. He does the same for me. Because if we never tell each other then we won't change anything and we will keep fighting over the same things.

So we talk to each other, a lot, all the time. If you know me you know I talk a lot. Jairo is the opposite, he's very shy. This is why our relationship was rocky at first. I never knew what he was thinking or feeling. But now that he talks to me, we are golden. We make it a point to talk every night before we go to bed. About anything, the weather, our days, the kids, and especially how we are feeling about each other. We honestly tell each other if the other person did something irritating or something nice.

My advice about having a healthy relationship is to communicate.