So, you're in love. You think you've arrived.
Well, you are sadly mistaken. You have completely missed the mark. Your journey of love -- rather your journey in love has just begun. A healthy romantic relationship is a dynamic, evolving continuously maturing process. When either partner views their relationship as “having arrived,” it will likely cease to be mutually satisfying.
Some of the key factors that will determine the QUALITY, longevity and health of your relationship are your (plural) willingness and ability to:
- Consistently and quickly address issues together, respectfully and courteously.
- Actively listen to what your partner is saying without having a separate conversation in your head or formulating your rebuttal.
- Do your best to understand his or her thoughts and ideas on the matter.
- Parrot/paraphrase – repeat what s/he said to confirm that you received the message that s/he was sending (confirm understanding).
- Stay on topic.
- Avoid making personal attacks.
- Becoming defensive.
- Never bring up the past. Learn to forgive and truly forget.
- Never betray confidence. Your conversations are for each other’s ears only – not be shared or lamented with your girlfriends or the guys (without your partner’s prior consent).
When you deal with an issue, you prevent it from morphing into a concern, a problem or a crisis. You remove from it the potential to suck the positive energy out of your relationship. When you talk to each other about your concerns, bringing them out into the open, this deprives them of the power to silently and insidiously, poison and undermine your love and affection for each other.
Communication is like oxygen in a relationship. It promotes growth, understanding, positive feelings toward each other and leads to the deepening of your commitment to each other. This is also foundational for both emotional and sexual intimacy.
The words of your significant other possess the power to hurt or to heal. It took me decades, unfortunately, to learn that because I am free to express myself to you, this does not preclude the need for me to sometimes veto a thought or an idea before it reaches my lips.
Healthy disagreement in a relationship is a good thing. Each of us is entitled to hold irreconcilable positions on a particular issue or idea. Hopefully, this is not the case for your core values or beliefs. This would signal serious incompatibility. Nonetheless, a mature adult knows that every person has the right to hold his or her beliefs. A mature, emotionally healthy individual respects this God given right and does not attempt to force their belovèd to capitulate to their way of thinking about everything.
