1. That moment when you have a make or break kind of fight and, instead of breaking, the relationship strengthens and things change and you both change in ways you never thought possible. And, all of a sudden, you’re standing in the middle of the relationship you’d always hoped it would be, all because you took the risk to stay instead of the easy answer to leave.
2. That moment you say the thing that’s on your heart that you have been crazy afraid to say and they just look at you in the most heartbreakingly beautiful way, like, “why was this a big deal to tell me?”
3. That moment you’re so ill that you can hardly move and, just by virtue of being close to them, you feel yourself getting better. And they run out to get you your favorite soup and they kiss you even though you’re contagious and you feel like you might cry from the tenderness in which they’re treating you.
4. That moment when you come out of a particularly difficult season of your life and they are still there loving you even when you acted terribly and took out your frustration on them. But the fact that they are still there, loving you completely, is a miracle in of itself and it guts you because it’s so much love, maybe more love than you could give.
5. That moment when they do something so intimate that proves how well they know you and you think, oh my god, they know me. They really know me. This is real. This is something. They’re not messing around with my heart; they’re learning me and, not only accepting my quirks, but actually, full on, loving them.
6. That moment when you both get on the exact same page about your future and you both want the same things in the same timeline and you’re compromising and working together and everything on the landscape of your future feels possible and exciting.
7. That moment when you do something wildly embarrassing and you think they’re going to tease you, but they just look at you with this intense love in their eyes and you realize this goes beyond that puppy love, but this is deeper than you expected and you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
8. That moment when you see how much you’ve been transformed by their love and that untangling who you are from who they are is nearly impossible and that’s frightening to a degree, you realize it’s also rare to feel this way. And, you see, clear as day, how much this love has impacted your life and the power of it blows you away in many ways.
9. That moment when you realize that a significant period of time has passed since you’ve been doubtful about their love or doubtful about how they feel about you and the absence of that feeling is so powerful that it takes a moment for you to realize that they’ve helped you understand how deep love goes and that alone is one of the most precious gifts they could give you.
10. That moment when you are radically open and leave nothing on your heart and bleed out onto this person and they accept you so fully and so completely that you realize that love is the only thing that could do this, that could accept in this way, that could support in this way, and it’s so precious that you don’t exactly know why you were given this person, but you’re just going to accept them completely and fully, too, without worrying about why they picked you, but just being pretty damn happy that they did.
11. That moment when you humble yourself and admit to an egregious mistake and, while it would be completely within normal standards for them to be angry with you, they do something entirely different and they hug you and forgive you and it’s so out of the ordinary that it knocks you over in a way and you wonder, how did this happen, how are we here, this is amazing.
12. That moment when you realize this is the first person you’ve truly been yourself with. That they bring out the best in you, the most vulnerable version of yourself. And, while you’re terrified of what that means, the desire to love them outweighs the fear of not loving them. And, you understand what love means, for the first time in your life, you really do. You see love and how transformative it is. How it lifts people up. How it makes people better versions of themselves. And you see, first hand, in your own experience, that the power of love is stronger than anything else that exists. 
