Love is a fragile and vulnerable state of being and can manifest in ever-mystifying sets of behaviors. It is impossible to intentionally create it, to control its nature, or to predict how it lives and why it dies.
Challenges, stress, crumpled resources, and broken dreams are often seen as the enemies of sustaining love. Yet, some couples are able to struggle through hard times, heavily battered by difficult crises, and somehow become more connected as they navigate those treacherous emotional waters. Others, whose love was nourished and protected, still somehow lose it, often for reasons they cannot understand.
I have worked with couples for more than four decades, throughout multiple societal and cultural changes that have affected how they form and live through their intimate relationships. I’ve watched and noted what behaviors and interactions seem to be present from the beginning of these relationships that hold and deepen in commitment over time, and I will share 13 of them with you.
As you read through them, explore whether these ways of being are happening in your relationship now. Though they may not be fully predictable of your future together, identifying them will give you a glimpse of what is more likely to come.
1. Red Telephone Priority
Successful long-term love requires that both partners show up whenever either reaches out in a crisis. They know that those SOS cries are never shouted in vain, and nothing comes before they are responded to. “I need you” becomes “I’m here.”
2. Meta-Communication
Couples who grow in their ability to connect emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually do not rehash unproductive interactions. After a dispute, they debrief, careful to stay connected in the way they are with each other during those reenactments rather than continuously arguing points of view. “We live in each other’s reality, even while holding our own.”
3. Weaving
Life is not just in the moment it occurs. It is a compilation of all that has come before and what may be likely to ensue. Couples whose love lasts make certain that they enter each new transaction as an extension of what has come before and a realistic view of what is likely to happen in the future.
4. Chivalry
Most relationships are, for the most part, transactional. Successful negotiations for the fair distribution of resources are prominent. What is promised is delivered or renegotiated, and neither party feels exploited.
But there are times when one partner must give more without expectation of return. Long-term love requires that sacrifice when it is necessary.
5. Championing
Couples can argue privately as to the value and importance of who and what they are to each other. Even when they disagree, they encourage each other to be the best they can be. But to the outside world, they are an unbeatable team. “I always know he has my back.” “She is forever in my corner.”
6. Tenacity
Bad times and undue pressure can challenge any relationship, but long-term love requires the commitment to stay the course and for the partners to help each other bounce back from sorrow and loss. They never give up during hard times, saving their energy for new resolutions when the crises have quieted.
7. Parallel Devotion to the Same Set of Ethics and Morals
Trust is crucial in any relationship. Partners who share the same beliefs about thoughts and behaviors know that each of them will always behave away from each other in the same way they do when they are present. They live in parallel devotion.
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8. Growing From Loss Together
There are no relationships that escape unpredicted challenges. Resources can run dry, and the distribution of time, energy, love, money, and availability can become dangerously low. Successful couples know they must grieve together and never apart when life overwhelms them.
9. More Than the Sum of the Parts
When a couple knows and validates that they are always better people with each other than they could ever be apart, they rely on that remarkable connection to give one another the freedom to grow and transform within their unshakable commitment to the relationship. Even if the relationship ends, they choose to feel blessed by having lived it.
10. Validation of Different Realities
All relationship partners see the world differently at times. Long-term love partners seek expansion of their own world views through those differences. They are authentic and honest with each other and not threatened when their realities don’t automatically line up. They trust the other not out to entrap or control but to extend both of their lives into areas neither might explore without the other’s different points of view.
11. No Empty Threats
People who know how to love deeply do not challenge their relationships without careful and deliberate thought. Even when interactions slip into dangerous territory, they do not threaten dire outcomes when they do not mean them. They do not make the present moment the definition of a whole relationship nor forget what they value in each other and the relationship, even when they are on rocky ground.
12. Honoring Each Other’s Cultures and People
People are formed by every important past experience and person they have known. No matter what has contributed to a person’s creation of self, it is etched into the being of that person. People who stay in love know that their partners may have both positive and negative past and present feelings about their family members that they must work through.
Successful partners never interfere with that process or put their partners in the middle. They can share how they are being affected by behaviors from each other’s families but never force their partners to make decisions that they have not made on their own.
13. Forgiveness
All relationship partners hurt one another at times. Those who make it for the long haul are always ready to try again. They don’t forgive and forget, expecting to erase mistakes. They remember, learn, and correct, moving on to a better way of being together because of what they learned from their experience.
