By Brianna Wiest
1. You are not consumed by passion. You experience it while still maintaining your individuality as well as being aware that it’s not what healthy, happy relationships are built off of. It’s a crucial aspect in your connection, but it’s not the glue that holds you together.
2. You hold space for one another. When one person is speaking, the other is doing nothing but listening: not coming up with a response, not interrupting with a different observation. You are fully present for one another because you value what the other feels and thinks.
3. You both value personal growth, and see how your relationship in particular is a tool to help you accomplish that.
4. You’re very comfortable around one another – but not in the lazy, dull way. You can have sparks and melty gooey gross feelings while still being comfortable enough to cohabitate and function together, and that is much more magical than the alternative (jitters aren’t sexy).
5. Your relationship preceded a significant shift in perspective. You’re not the person you were when you met them, and a lot of the ways your opinions or emotional capacities have expanded have been facilitated by the ways they’ve helped you think and feel.
6. You put feeling over fact. You don’t argue logistics over how someone is feeling. For example, if one person made an upsetting comment, the other doesn’t brush it off by saying, “Well, I didn’t mean anything by it.” They listen, and try to learn, regardless.
7. You talk more than you do anything else. In fact, your best dates are being anywhere that’s quiet and private enough that you can just… talk.
8. You appreciate what you have while you have it. You aren’t constantly wanting more because you genuinely know you have their love. You don’t need any extra gestures or promises to prove it (though they’re lovely when you do get them!)
9. You’re equals, but you also have your ‘roles.’ Those roles consist of whatever you want and need them to be, but most importantly, they are natural and they are established. You know who is better and handling each aspect of your lives together, and you trust one another to do just that.
10. You see partnership as an opportunity to experience love, not a tool to create certainty. You aren’t desperate for proof that they love you, you aren’t threatened by them so much as speaking to another attractive human being, you don’t necessarily need them to promise you forever and ever. You know you’re in it together right now.
11. You think similarly, which is another way of saying, you’re alike in the ways it matters most, particularly regarding how you process the world around you, or what your fundamental belief systems are.
12. They respond to (and affirm!) you the more you are unfiltered and honest. You’ve noticed that they take best to when you’re expressing your most genuine thoughts, opinions and feelings – it’s not that your #unfiltered being is not something they have to cope with, it’s something they want.
13. You do your self-work together. You talk about how you’re improving yourselves, or what you want to do with your careers, or what you hope for your (individual) futures. Your time together is about much more than just your partnership, it’s about how your partnership is going to help facilitate the life you most want.
14. You can separate knowing you had a bad days from thinking you have a bad relationship. You’re able to not let your personal issues bleed into the relationship itself. (This is one of the main reasons most fail.) But you value your connection too much to let yourself do that, and if there’s an actual issue with the relationship itself, you’re able to address that on its own.
