This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Brown chapter.
Everyone, at some point throughout a relationship, questions whether they feel they are with the right person. No one wants to waste their time with someone they know they could never see themselves ending up with or that will end in a horrible heartbreak from a relationship they knew wasn’t right long ago. No relationship is perfect, and there will be highs and lows in every one, but it is important to determine whether the lows are manageable or whether they are signs of a bigger problem. Here are 10 important ways to know how well your relationship is going, and if it’s worth it to stick around.
- Attending: In the right relationship, support goes beyond having a shoulder to cry on. Support denotes showing a mutual interest in each other’s goals and feeling happy about each other’s successes, almost as if they were your own. Knowing someone else believes in you makes you believe in yourself and your capabilities, and it makes you want to be the best person you can be. You always feel comfortable to go to each other and have no doubt that they will be there for you.
- Individuality: You feel like you give each other the space that each of you needs to do your own thing. You both continue to do the things that you love and hold onto what you believe, even if your views don’t always directly align. Do not lose who you are because of someone else. When you are not together, you feel secure and can still be happy without them. Just knowing how lucky you are to have each other in your life makes you feel content.
- Free Your Mind: If you find yourself holding back from your partner, something is not quite right. You should feel completely comfortable being yourself around each other and showing your flaws without worrying about being judged. You should feel safe complaining or communicating your personal needs and wants. Expressing something that has been bothering you or disagreeing with each other is completely normal, and is important in learning more about each other.
- Talk It Out: Fighting in a relationship is inevitable—agreeing on everything is not healthy. Fighting should be done maturely so that you can work together to fix whatever issue has arisen. Healthy arguments do not include screaming or rude or hostile tones, but rather of rational discussions that unwind the thoughts and feelings of both partners. Fighting is a natural part of being in a relationship with someone and it indicates that you are both determined to make it work.
- Priorities straight: Accepting that your partner has other priorities, aside from you, is not always easy. It is crucial to find a healthy balance between maintaining each other as a top priority while also attending to other important aspects of your life. While school work and activities can make it difficult to find free time, you should still always manage to find ways to see each other, even if it is for a very short period of time. The relationship should never feel one sided and you should both put in the effort so that the relationship will stay strong.
- Trust and forgiveness: Trust and forgiveness form the foundation of a successful relationship. There should be no secrets and no lying to each other. Both of you are bound to make plenty of mistakes, and a large component of trusting someone fully is being able to admit when you have done something wrong. If something has really upset you, take the amount of time needed until you are ready to forgive and to let go of the past. Holding grudges and holding onto each other’s previous mistakes mean taking steps backwards in developing your relationship.
- Blessings from friends + family: Naturally, the people who you feel closest to and who have the best intentions for you should adore the person that you love most. In a serious relationship, both of you are going to be spending a lot of time with one another’s friends and families, so it’s a bad sign if your they do not get along. It is important that the people who mean the most to you approve, and believe that you make a good pair.
- Power of Sex: Having a positive sex life keeps things exciting and allows a couple to maintain their spark and passion. Feeling that passionate connection during sex can immensely improve your romantic connection, as it constantly assures both of you that the love and desire between you two is still thriving. Sex provides an opportunity for both of you to express what you can’t communicate through words. You should both be so attracted to each other that there are times where it is quite literally hard for you not to rip each other’s clothes off.
- Adore every piece: Two people get along best when they love each other for exactly who they are. In an ideal relationship, both people feel like the luckiest humans in the world to be with the other.. Both of you respect who the other is and their decisions in life and neither of you want to change who the other is. And most importantly, in the right relationship, both partners are with each other because they truly love being with each other, and not because they are just afraid of being alone.
- You Are in Love: It is your overall feelings about the relationship and about the one you love that ultimately determines whether it is right for you. You should feel like you were made for each other, and you truly love every quirk and unusual habit about each other. Neither you nor your partner could possibly imagine being with anyone else. Even when you are doing something boring together, it’s fun because you are with each other. You look into each other’s eyes, and you both feel an indescribable, amazing feeling of being love. Putting everything on the line and risking getting your heart broken into pieces is worth it for both of you, because you would do just about anything to have the opportunity to be with the person you love most. In the right relationship, being in love should feel as good as it does for me.