Love is like sunlight — essential but not enough by itself.
I should know: I’m marrying my high school sweetheart! I’ve been dreaming of marrying my now-fiance since I met him in ninth grade. But it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows.
Going from high school sweethearts to engaged is a long process. Truthfully, most relationships are, and overcoming roadblocks is essential to happy, long-lasting relationships.
Do you want your relationship to stand the test of time? Then you need to keep these three tenets in mind.
Love isn’t everything…and that’s okay.
Love isn’t enough by itself.
But love, like sunlight, can help the relationship grow. It provides the nutrients and the drive. However, it’s up to the relationship to set down roots, overcome adversaries, and put in the work.
One way to do that? Instead of relying solely on love, sparks, and romance, build a friendship with your partner. My fiance is my absolute best friend and this has been critical in overcoming issues in the relationship.
Studies show that couples who play together, stay together.
“The more you invest in fun and friendship and being there for your partner, the happier the relationship will get over time,” 1 says psychologist Howard Markman.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? Relationships of any kind grow stronger through shared interactions and interests. This isn’t earth-shattering news. Yet, some people don’t make it a priority to build friendship with their lover. Instead, they prioritize romance and sex — which are important, don’t get me wrong, but so is that bond of friendship.
There are so many things you can do together to facilitate that friendship. Here are some ideas that worked for me and my fiance:
- Start a garden.
- Cook together.
- Watch documentaries.
- Exercise.
- Start a two-person book club, complete with snacks and discussions.
- Play video games.
- Go to a meetup together.
- Build a fort and talk about your dreams.
- Do a weekly brunch and mimosa “date” to catch up.
Build up that friendship together and you’ll be stronger as a couple.
Acceptance is essential.
Whether you’re dating your high school sweetheart or not, any long-term relationship will come with your partner changing in some way.
They’ll change their preferences. Their diet. Their values. Their whole damn career. In our case? We were both going to be teachers and have summers off together. But I’m not a teacher anymore.
My fiance and I have both changed as we went through high school, college, and then into the “real world” together.
Real talk: you’re not necessarily going to love all the changes they undergo. I can promise you that. But more real talk: you don’t have to.
My fiance didn’t love it when I decided to step away from teaching. From his standpoint, it wasn’t great for him. For one, I was directionless, floating between odd jobs for a while. For another thing, we didn’t have summers off together, which is something we’d dreamed about while getting our bachelor’s degrees. But it wasn’t his decision, so in the end, he could either accept it or not.
If the changes aren’t harming anyone, and they are something you can live with, then the key to harmony is true acceptance.
A philosophy that I try to live by is that of Stoicism, which encourages us to accept things that are outside of our control.
Really, there are many ways people can change. If you accept those changes, it can be really beautiful for your relationship. Even though you’re dating the same person, you’re always learning about them.
Conflict resolution will save your relationship.
Poor conflict resolution can kill more than your relationship. We’ve all seen enough episodes of Snapped to know it’s true.
Joking aside, conflicts will arise. There will be things you can’t accept, things that cause real discontent between you and your partner. Once you glide through the honeymoon phase, life will get harder. Especially once you live together.
When my fiance and I moved out together, we were still in that honeymoon phase. He was my hot boyfriend who could do no wrong. Well, getting an apartment together changed that!
Turns out, we had dramatically different financial habits and we would constantly fight over the chores. As you can imagine, that put a serious strain on our relationship.
I’ll be honest — I definitely considered breaking up with him within the first year we lived together. He considered it too. The world is stressful enough, and if you can’t coexist peacefully at home, what’s the point?
It would have been easy to give up. But you know what? Love was still trying to nurture the relationship. Every time I thought about breaking up with him, it whispered, “Hey, don’t forget…I exist.”
I learned it’s possible to love someone and also really dislike them at the same time.
That’s when we realized we weren’t resolving the conflict. We were just fighting, throwing angry words at each other, and then trying to forget it happened.
Something needed to change. We needed to talk and work it out or ultimately part.
It was from that understanding that we developed a system for weekly check-ins. This system helped us adapt to life together and overcome our problems. It saved our relationship.
Some key points of conflict resolution that we’ve learned are these:
- Set aside time outside of the conflict to talk. You’ll be less heated and more rational when you discuss concerns and issues.
- Have an agenda when you talk. What are some key things you want to discuss? Write them down beforehand.
- Don’t blame. Instead, say how you feel, not what they did.
- Come up with solutions that work for both of you. Don’t be afraid to brainstorm.
- Be respectful and own up to your mistakes. No one’s perfect. They’re not, and neither are you. If you can own up to your shittiness, they can probably own up to theirs. It’s a win-win.
- Set conflict resolution time aside regularly. This helps to keep issues from bottling up and then exploding later. Something small has the power to become very big while under pressure. For us, weekly check-ins worked well.
Without setting aside time that was designed for conflict resolution, we would not be together today. We sure as hell wouldn’t be getting married.
Even now, every Sunday we sit down with some coffee and talk about our finances, any conflicts, and our goals. This ability to rationally discuss conflicts has worked with the love we already felt for each other and made our relationship heal.
. . .
Love isn’t everything. Love can’t conquer all. But…it sort of can. It’s because we love each other that we were able to find the strength to implement strategies that would save and grow our relationship.
The three tenents to keep in mind for a long, happy relationship?
- Build a friendship with your partner.
- Accept them as they grow and change as a person.
- Find time and energy for conflict resolution.
If you do those three things, your relationship will bloom. Maybe you’ll marry your high school sweetheart too.
1 – The more you invest in fun and friendship and being there for your partner, the happier the relationship will get over time,” says Howard Markman, a psychologist who co-directs the university’s Center for Marital and Family Studies.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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Photo credit: Adobe Stock
