Have you ever felt like the world expects perfection from you? Have you ever hidden away behind a mask of having every single little aspect of your life 100% together because you were afraid it would push someone away? Or have you ever downplayed your own pain to avoid being a burden to the people you love?

We have a problem in modern-day relationships. Today, we live in a world where our eyes gravitate towards false perfection. You see ideal couples on Facebook who look happier than you’ve ever been. You see influencers on Instagram who somehow seem to have it all together, better than you do. There is an endless stream of backup options at the tips of our fingers on a daily basis too. The second that something goes wrong in a significant relationship, it’s all too easy to jump online and welcome in whoever is next in line or go out and look for someone who’s convincingly faking it.

The bottom line is that we can’t make ourselves happy this way. Everyone has their challenges and faults, and part of life is trying to work through those and helping the people we love work through theirs. That doesn’t mean you want to change someone, it means you want to build with them.

What happens though when we start to feel like the perfection mentality has painted a big target on our backs and our lives? What do we do when the person we want to impress the most is the same person who picks us apart and puts us under a microscope? They’re under pressure to find someone who fits this bracket of perfect and never steps a foot wrong and with that comes a sense of holding onto and minor flaw.

The truth is that none of us are easy to handle by any means. We make stupid mistakes, but as long as we only make them once, then it’s just a valuable lesson. We can hurt each other, and we can also tend to be selfish in our relationships sometimes by being so focused on what we want to get out of it, or we come with some baggage. Whether it’s from our childhood, our mental health struggles or even the last loser who broke our hearts, we all have painful things we carry with us. If I can tell you one lesson that I’ve learned, it’s that life is too short to stay tied to a person who treats you like you are too hard to love because of your challenges.

You deserve to be with someone who sees past your flaws and is willing to help you overcome them. If the person you love expects you to be perfect at all times and never shows compassion for your struggles, you’re with the wrong one. The only person that deserves you, is the person who accepts your challenges and openly acknowledges that they have their own faults too and as a couple you work on those together.

You don’t deserve to lay awake at night feeling like you just can’t measure up to what your significant other expects. Shallow love will always float lazily at surface level, where you need to be poised and uncracked to keep them around. Pretending to have it all together can only keep a shallow love going for so long. The illusion will always fade.

What you do deserve, is an ocean deep connection that will not wither away at the first sign of trouble. If you run the risk of your partner walking away forever during the smallest of disagreements, that’s not a solid relationship. You should be able to face your challenges without having to constantly worry that your person isn’t going to stick around. The worst kind of relationship is the one where you have to repeatedly look back over your shoulder to make sure your partner is still there. Instead, you should be able to feel that your person is next to you, keeping up, and ready to face challenges head-on together. Life is about building together and pushing each other up. Life gets hard sometimes, that’s just how it is. But if you’re strong together it’s rewarding to push thorough it and come out the other side.

You deserve someone who accepts every bit of you, flaws and all. You deserve someone who would never hold your past against you, or treat you like you’re damaged goods or just not quite good enough. The relationship you should be in is the one that makes you finally feel safe to open up and be your imperfect, honest self. You may think that you are a lot to handle, but with the right person, you will never have to feel unlovable.

You deserve someone who sees you for who you really are, and doesn’t cower away to look for other options when things get rocky. You deserve honest commitment without strings attached. You should never have to beg someone to love you and be loyal to you. Having flaws is not an excuse for someone to discard you and move on to the next person until that person inevitably starts showing their flaws too. Because they’ll soon realise that they’ve gotten themselves into a pattern they can’t get out of. Constantly going after something that doesn’t exist, whether that’s to please themselves or others around them.

The only one you should give yourself to is the person who witnesses your chaos and willingly chooses to stay anyways. Don’t waste time chasing someone who wants you to be surface-level perfect. Wait for the type of love that remains strong no matter what glitz and glamour pass by you both. That’s something solid.

Most of all, save your heart for the one who is up for your challenges and is excited to build a future with you based knowing that there will be shit you have to work through together.