You don't go out to fancy dinners anymore. She doesn't dress up as often as before. You prefer to order in pizza rather than drive 5 km to your favourite place. You don't like taking selfies of the two of you anymore. You don't do fancy gifts, Facebook check-ins anymore. But you still want to come home to each other at the end of the day. What is it? Are you falling out of love? Is your relationships changing?

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Yes, it certainly is. But not for worse. It's changing form; it means you are approaching the next milestone of a relationship – that of mature everyday love. The kind that doesn't need status updates to validate itself; the kind that doesn't need to hold hands to feel together; the kind that doesn't need expensive gifts to feel valued. You have graduated to that dull golden phase of love that warms the heart and lights up the soul. 

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Don't worry about ‘losing the spark', about your relationship becoming dull, about you not having fun anymore. A relationship undergoes changes with the passage of time and as you grow older. No relationship will always remain the same – the dynamics will change. The heady rush of a love affair in your teenage years will give way to a more practical equation in your career's formative years. As you get out and make a career for yourself, your priorities will change and you will no longer spend endless hours talking to each other on the phone or saying sweet nothings in each other's ears. 

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Valentine's Day will no longer be a candlelight dinner at a fancy restaurant surrounded by heart-shaped balloons. There might not be any gifts; there will not be any 6-month anniversary celebrations, there will not be fancy dinners every week. It doesn't mean there's no love; it just means you are evolving. 

If you are happier sitting at home in your pajamas eating leftover Maggi and watching reruns of ‘FRIENDS' with your lover, you are very much in love. If you are doing the most mundane of things together and are comfortable doing so, you are very much in love. 

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The *** too will never be the same – it won't always be the heady wild romp in the car backseat; it will become more mellow, more patient, more satisfying. Don't just assume your relationship is over if you are not having *** as much as you used to before, or if you aren't being as voyeuristic as you were at the start of the relationship. A relationship is more than just ***, and there will be days when it'll take a backseat over something else, say just chilling with your partner over cups of hot coffee on a wintry evening.  

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And don't worry about the fights. You suddenly realise you and your partner are fighting more than ever, and your fights are no longer over petty issues like they were in the initial days. They are more serious in nature now, they are not really fights but disagreements. You feel more free to argue with them over things you don't agree about and they do the same; you are no longer the couple that agrees with everything about each other. You are critical of each other and that sometimes leads to fights, but you always get back to normal the next minute, and that's the change your relationship has undergone. 

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You can spend time alone without feeling guilty about leaving out your partner, you start doing things without each other and it's no issue. You both understand the need for space the other one needs and you respect that instead of being resentful. You love your beer get-togethers with your friends as much as you love going out with her. 

Giving yourself space and attention is never a bad thing in a relationship. It doesn't mean you are being selfish; or your partner is. The change that comes with being adults is this – you learn to give space to the other person, you learn to look beyond the petty fights, you learn to love them despite their shortcomings. That, my friend, doesn't mean that the love is lacking and that your relationship is not as perfect as before. It means that your relationship just got real.