On the flip side, my fashionista side has a favorite outfit, one that I gravitate to when I’m preparing for a night out.

Relationships can be viewed similarly. There’s usually a point at the beginning when a relationship feels like my favorite trendy outfit: It’s exciting and a little different than something I’d normally put on. It makes me feel ready to step outside my comfort zone, usually to impress my new romantic interest. It carries an air of mystery because it’s out of the ordinary. It keeps me on my toes.

Then there’s the relationship equivalent of my ratty old sweatshirt. It’s comfortable. It’s easy. I feel confident in it. It’s predictable (in a very good way). I know what to expect. I don’t have to worry or feel anxious about things because I know what’s coming. I know I can be completely myself without feeling judged or critiqued.

I think we often make the mistake of assuming that the stage of comfort and predictability is dull and boring. Instead, it just represents a shift in the relationship, one that is necessary to any long-term commitment.

Without either of these relationship stages, we’re missing something. If we get lost and caught up in the exciting unpredictability of the beginning and don’t progress to a level of comfortability and confidence, we’re cheating ourselves out of an honest, authentic relationship in which we can grow by letting another person into the truest parts of ourselves.

Conversely, if we jump straight into a level of predictability, we’re creating a false sense of intimacy and denying the truth that it takes time to get to that level – we can’t know someone as well as we should to get to a place of ratty sweatshirt comfortability without making a deliberate effort and taking intentional time.

When it comes down to it, I’m a ratty sweatshirt, comfortable relationship kind of girl. But I know also that I can’t get to the level of stability that I crave without engaging with and enjoying the exciting uncertainties. Striking a balance between the two and understanding that there’s a place for both is the challenge, especially when I’d rather just hang out on the couch in my old sweatshirt.

People freaked out because the new book sounds a little controversial. (If you haven’t heard about any of this, you should read this before you continue.)

I preface my blog with all of this not because Bell’s new book is about romantic relationships (it’s actually about the existence of hell), but because I’m about to do what everyone is doing with his book – judge a book I haven’t read based solely on it’s promotional website. So, I wanted to tell you that I’m aware of the irony, and introduce you to the controversy if you’re currently unaware.

A friend sent me the website for “The Soulmate Secret,” a book supposedly about how to find your soulmate by summoning the “powerful forces of attraction used to magnetize deep and passionate love.” Author Arielle Ford’s argument is that “finding true love is possible for any one at any age if you’re willing to prepare your self, on all levels, to become a magnet for love.”

I’m inclined to agree with Ford that any one at any age can find love. I don’t think love discriminates, though I do think it becomes harder as you age to avoid settling.

Further examination of her website reveals other legitimate relationship advice. She says that clinging to past loves can keep you from moving on to someone who’s better for you (whom she refers to as your “soulmate”). She argues that you can be your own enemy at finding love if you’re not actually prepared to be in a long-term relationship.

With those notions, I completely agree. They center on the idea that you need to work on yourself as much (or more) than your partner or your relationship – and I’ve definitely spouted about that before.

What I don’t know is what her notion of a soulmate is. In general, I don’t agree with the notion of a soulmate at all. If Ford’s idea of soulmate is that there is one (and only one) perfect person for you who will always make you happy and of who you’ll never tire, then I disagree emphatically.

The danger is in thinking that one person can make you happy and all you have to do is find that one person. If you’re looking for a relationship that’s “perfect” (or what you have contrived in your mind as perfect), you’ll be searching endlessly. And you might end up divorced, wondering what happened.

Like I said before, I haven’t read her book. But the idea that finding your “true love” (which sounds more like a Disney song than a plan on which to base your life) can be boiled down to harnessing “powerful forces of attraction” is hard to swallow. Relationships are work. They always will be.

So should I condemn “The Soulmate Secret” or say that Ford is off her rocker? Nope. But I do wonder if some of her arguments could encourage people to back out of a great relationship (or marriage) if things don’t pan out as planned. And that is as upsetting to me as what people are saying about Rob Bell.

Both the title of 20-something Elna Baker’s coming-of-age memoir and the name of the annual Halloween event, “The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance” doesn’t just focus on singles, Halloween or Mormonism. It paints a picture of a girl at a crossroads, straddling her Mormon upbringing and her New York City ZIP code.

Despite the fact that the reader follows Elna as she contemplates religion (and occasionally eternity), the musings don’t come across as preachy. Elna is, by profession, a comedian and an actor, which makes her memoir read more like a novel than a piece of autobiographical nonfiction.

Elna struggles with what many 20-something females wrestle – body image, dating, slightly neurotic parents, finding a first job, growing into the person she wants to be. Her internal battle is engaging, like listening to an old friend. She documents her embarrassing moments (she routinely blurts out “I’m Mormon” when men try to kiss her) and her inner monologue as if you’re sitting in the chair next to her. Her honest humor made me feel like I was reading vignettes from my own life.

Elna is boy-crazy. But her genuine desire to be married is routinely foiled by self-sabotage, whether it’s her involuntary reversion to the vocabulary of a 12-year-old or her tendency to go limp as a ragdoll when a guy kisses her.

Her inability to keep a boyfriend (and the fact that much of her life revolves around finding a husband) leads her on a journey of self-discovery, one that is consistently refined as her experiences with both guys and Mormonism threaten her love for living in the “place of possibility” – or the place where she doesn’t have to commit to anything.

What she discovers is that she can’t be in a relationship, let alone a marriage, if she doesn’t first understand who she is. Her refusal to commit to something (a guy, God, Mormonism) leaves her without a sense of her own identity. In the end, how can you commit to someone else if you can’t even commit to yourself?

I love it when boy-crazy people’s stories don’t end with meeting the person of their dreams and planning to live happily ever after. Thankfully, Elna’s doesn’t. Instead, after globe-trotting to woo a non-Mormon ex, she comes to a crossroads – to be a Mormon or not to be a Mormon? But the question isn’t just about religion. It’s about the decision to take one path over another, even when both paths contain key parts of you and would foster important parts of your personality. It’s about a decision to commit to one version of yourself instead of adapting depending on the situation.

Elna’s antics make both for a good and thoughtful read. And if that isn’t enough of a draw, just remember the 35-year-old man wearing a duck costume – that’s reason enough to pick up a copy.

My line of thinking may get me the best black sweater, but it also costs me hours of time. It makes me indecisive and slow to commit because I’m concerned as to if I’m getting the best deal on the sweater that’s most flattering and comfortable in that trendy-but-classic way. And then when I finally choose a sweater, even if I love it and got a great deal, I usually still feel like I might have found a better deal if I’d just gone to one more store.

Such a mindset is easily transferable to relationships. Even though we might be content with our significant others, we’ve been conditioned by our culture to wonder about the next best thing. Have we found the most perfect person for us or does the fact that he doesn’t like the same music or she falls asleep during football mean it’s time to go shopping?

For a reason unbeknownst to me, I’ve avoided projecting my maximizing personality onto my relationships. Instead of constantly focusing on if I can get an upgrade, I’ve managed to quiet the obsessive voice in my head and be content with who I’m with.

Can we all manage to release our maximizing compulsions? I’d like to think so. What it takes is intentionality. Instead of letting ourselves reminisce about old boy/girlfriends and how they were better than our current squeezes, we can deliberately steer ourselves away from those memories. Instead of constantly wondering if that cute new guy or girl at work would be a better fit for us than our current relationship, we can remind ourselves that we’re happy with our significant others (and if we’re not, maybe we should spend our time pondering how we can either improve our current relationship or move on, if it’s time).

A good friend of mine recently told me that anything worth dedicating time to requires that kind of intentionality – nothing happens by accident, as much as we’d like that to be the case. If we can dedicate ourselves to being deliberate and focusing our efforts on improving our relationships instead of always wondering if things would be better or easier with someone else, we’ll end up with much healthier relationships – and a lot less wasted time.

If you read ONE THING today, it should be the last paragraph of THIS.

What we should all learn: DON’T marry your soul mate.

Science says: You can prevent you (and your significant other) from cheating.

Mind trick: What “falling out of love” really means.

Quiz: Could you sustain a marriage?

Got another resource I should know about? Tell me!

(While you might be inclined to write my highly sensitive nature off as a fabricated diagnosis intended to make girls feel better about themselves or for people who were coddled as children, let me assure you that you’re wrong.)

Because of my highly sensitive nature, when I internalize side comments, sarcastic remarks and criticism, sometimes I begin to believe that those comments define who I am. In an effort to quell some of that discomfort and to feel less vulnerable, I try to numb those feelings. I deny that I’m experiencing vulnerability, fear and pain.

In her recent TED talk, researcher Bréne Brown discusses this idea of numbing ourselves to our pain. She spent six years researching and interviewing people to discover what makes a person connected to others, what makes them feel a sense of love and belonging.

What she discovered was completely counterintuitive to her own structured nature: Those who feel the most connected, who have the most sense of love and belonging, are those who are most willing to feel vulnerable and authentic. (I HIGHLY encourage you to take 15 minutes out of your day and watch Brown’s talk. It will change your life – and I’m not exaggerating.)

The sense of being one’s true self (authenticity) even when it’s intimidating, scary or a risk (vulnerability) creates a feeling of worth. That feeling of worth translates to a kind of connectivity with others and with ourselves that makes us feel loved and like we belong.

What Brown concludes is that those who are most vulnerable are also those who are most willing to let themselves experience a full range of emotions. “We can’t selectively numb our emotions,” she says. We can’t pick and choose which emotions we want to feel and which ones we want to avoid because as soon as we try to squelch all our negative feelings, we limit our capacity to experience joy, happiness, love and connectivity.

And that impacts our relationships. If we’re not willing to put ourselves in a place of vulnerability in our relationships, we limit the rewards we can reap. If we put up walls to protect ourselves, we’re also limiting how much love we can feel. If we decide that certainty is the only knowledge worth putting our efforts towards, we lose the chance to see what could happen when we take a risk.

I see that in my own life now. I’ve recently made a decision to step into a relationship that has no guarantees. No one is handing me an itinerary or a roadmap for this venture. There’s no promise that I won’t end up hurt or broken again.

But the potential reward is greater than the risk. And my attempt at vulnerability and authenticity gives the relationship more traction and more space for growth than if I were to demand to know now what even the next six months will look like. I can already feel myself expanding and accepting who I am as I open up to someone else in a new, very vulnerable, very scary way.

While I can’t know what will happen next, I do know that regardless of what happens, I’ll be a better me in the end – even if that me is still a highly sensitive, over analytical, vulnerable mess.

At first, everything was great – people congratulated them on their walls, in person and in status updates. They were content with their decision and glad that the word had spread past their immediate friends.

Then, two weeks later, my friend’s “official” relationship fell apart. He suddenly broke up with her, with little explanation.

Did putting their relationship up on Facebook ultimately break them up?

Probably not. But, in the aftermath of what my friend thought was going to be a long-term relationship, she’s left picking up pieces of herself – online and in real life.

Break-ups are difficult, even if the decision to move on is mutual. Adjusting to single life, changing habits and rehashing the story and reasons for the break-up to friends and family is only part of the pain, to which the online scorn of “[Fill in your name here] is now single” appearing in all your friends’ news feeds only adds.

I used to think the boyfriends who refused to put our relationship on Facebook were trying to hide the fact that we were dating (cut me a break here: I was a freshman in college). Now, I see clearly why refraining from publicizing a romance all over your social network is a smart idea.

Not only does it prevent probing questions from random acquaintances if a break-up is to happen, it also protects your relationship from the unnecessary scrutiny of others. People I don’t talk to on a regular basis don’t need to know that I’m dating someone, regardless of how long it’s been. If I don’t talk to you enough to tell you, if the subject doesn’t come up naturally, then maybe it shouldn’t come up at all.

I’m in no way suggesting that deliberately hiding a dating relationship is acceptable – once we hide things from our friends, we know there’s something sketchy about what we’re doing. But I will advocate for being deliberate about who you tell and when.

Keeping a relationship off of Facebook also requires some level of confidence in ourselves, which can actually be an indicator of the health of a relationship. If we’re confident enough in ourselves and our decisions, and our closest friends know and support us, publishing our relationship statuses on Facebook becomes moot: We don’t need it to feel satisfied or content

If we feel compelled to Facebook it as soon as we start dating, we should ask ourselves what the start of this relationship is about. Is it about us and the person we’re dating enjoying each other? Or is it about living up to some societal standard that says we’re complete once we have a significant other?

Don’t misread me: Not everyone who has his/her relational status listed on Facebook is arrogant and self-serving. Once you have a solid relationship built, linking yourself to someone else via your profile page can just be another way you declare your confidence in your relationship. We just need to be careful that we’re not getting our confidence from what our Facebook relationship status says.

What about you? When do you think it’s appropriate to put your relationship on Facebook?

According to a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, there is. The study, published in 2006, linked taking marriage education classes before tying the knot to higher satisfaction and commitment in marriage, less conflict and reduced chances of divorce, regardless of couples’ race, income or education. Researchers studied a group of engaged couples through the process of premarital education classes.

While the study does acknowledge that this was a self-selecting group and they may have already had a solid social support system to further increase their likelihood of a successful marriage, the findings were great enough to suggest that couples who take the time and money to go through said classes decreased their chance of divorce. Part of what researchers discovered was that couples who have given thought to the consequences of divorce (especially if kids are involved) were less likely to take steps to get divorced. Instead, they were more likely to work through issues of unhappiness, conflict and even infidelity. But, couples who tried to engage in marriage education classes after major conflicts had arisen or infidelity had happened were less likely to fight for the marriage.

So what’s the point? This study, and a few others cited in this New York Times article, demonstrate that knowledge in general (and especially knowledge about divorce) gives couples a leg up on the national divorce rate (which has actually declined in the last 30 years). Basically it goes back to that grade-school cliché: Knowledge is power. If you understand the complexities of relationships, marriage, divorce, yourself, your partner and your baggage, you’ll be more likely to empathize and eventually forgive when conflicts and hardships do arise.

Ifeyinwa Offor Walker, a former VP of an educational nonprofit did just that. Instead of waiting until she popped out a baby, she took time off from her job to work on her young marriage.

“I took time off because as a recently-married, three-degree-holding, child-free, 29-year-old woman in New York, my priority is growing a solid foundation for my marriage/relationship with my husband,” she told The Wall Street Journal.

Unfortunately, she received some negative responses. People haven’t been supportive of her decision and usually ask questions about if her parents are aging, if she has a terminal illness or if she just wants to be a housewife. All of this begs the question: Are our relationships really that undervalued?

Maybe. Nearly 40 percent of Americans think that marriage is obsolete and you’re more likely to get divorced than you are to have a college degree.

What all this points to is that we’re more likely to put effort into our jobs than we are to put energy into our relationships. We have tricked ourselves into thinking that romance should be easy, thoughtless and second-nature. We should marry our soulmates, who fall easily into our laps. We should enjoy all the same things, we should feel fireworks instantly and constantly, we should always be happy, we shouldn’t fight and we should be absolutely and unwaveringly certain that this person is THE person.

If that’s what we believe, we need a reality check.

And that’s what this blog is all about. Relationships don’t just fall easily into place. They have to be cultivated, nurtured and maintained. If we stopped putting effort into our jobs, we’d probably get fired. And if we stop putting effort (and time and energy and care and thoughtfulness and kindness and selflessness) into our romantic relationships, there’s no reason we won’t get fired – by our partners.

Yes, goal-setting is more effective if we have tangible steps to carry out our resolutions. But it seems like we often forget that intangible aspirations can be accomplished with concrete steps.

How much more influential would our resolutions be if we made them with our significant others in mind? What if we vowed to learn to love better, to be more open, to share more and to be more selfless?

Sure, those goals might make it harder to measure our progress (it’s easier to check “eat a serving of vegetables” off a to-do list than “make my boyfriend feel appreciated”) and they might feel more uncomfortable (going to the gym can be rough but it usually feels better than swallowing my pride and admitting I made a mistake), but their lasting impacts on the people most important to us make them at least as important as eating right and exercising regularly.

So what kinds of resolutions can we make? Well, we can be better communicators, we can be honest, we can lower our expectations, we can admit we’re scared and we can stop acting like happily ever after is realistic.

Yes, these resolutions require more thought than taking our vitamins. They require planning, emotional sacrifice and self-examination. They make us engage our brains, defy our natural expectations and act in ways contrary to our tendencies.

But that makes them all the better.

So instead of joining a gym (though that’s not a bad idea) can we resolve to deliberately change and improve our relationships? I am. Who’s with me?

Looking for more New Year’s relationship resolution advice? Check this out.