Imagine you are carrying around a faux Prada bag you bought for six dollars. It looks real. It feels real. But how long can you keep convincing yourself that it is?

Relationships all too often work the same way. Eventually, the fake label falls off, the seams bust, the handles break. The quality just isn't there.

There are many days we feel clueless, and riddled by blind spots. We rarely understand the difference between 'faux and full' when it comes to relationships. Too often our relationships masquerade as real, and we spend countless months trying to build on something to get us to the next phase, only to discover that we’re trapped by a faux love that's actually going nowhere.

When a relationship is real, it's growing; it's going somewhere. You have shared interests, and there's an unspoken acceptance. And without these building blocks in place, you're setting yourself up for a pile of agony and heartache.

Even from the beginning, in that very first week, we all know when something is wrong. It's very easy to absorb misinformation, to create and spread an underlying assumption that you're somehow incomplete if you haven't found your soul mate.

Try taking this litmus test: The next time you are facing a snag of doubt, try going back to the first week you met, or an early moment where you felt something was off. Take a minute and see how your body feels; you may experience uneasiness or a bit of fear. Your body is telling you something crucial. Trust it, explore it, and it will reveal what you need to know.

It isn’t wrong to want an ideal love. We all want one. And we have a perfect right to believe that such a love is possible in this life. Not a faux love. A full love.