A healthy relationship is going to challenge you.
But not in the same way you’ve been challenged by unhealthy relationships.
Instead of the exhaustion from sleepless nights, anxiety ridden mornings, and not feeling good enough, you’ll be challenged to be vulnerable.
You’ll be
Choosing a partner is largely an emotional choice, but the decision also needs wisdom and foresight. If we want a long term relationship, then we must prioritize traits and skills such as kindness, good communication, and the willingness to do better.
Relationships rarely end because of a lack of love.
They end because people feel unseen and misunderstood by each other.
They end because instead of communicating, they become resentful, or feel so helpless that they withdraw from the relationship.
Instead of blaming each
People avoid the uncomfortable conversations to “keep the peace.”
But peace isn’t the goal of a relationship.
Love is.
And when we love someone, we have the hard conversations in service of that love.
Growth is when we realize a person’s character is more important than their charm. Some of the most attractive qualities in a person are:
Integrity
Self-awareness
Kindness
Vulnerability
A sense of humor
Playfulness
Accountability for their behavior
Generosity
Loyalty
Honesty
One thing I figured out about love later in life is that we need someone who’s going to be in our corner. Someone who’ll be the best friend we’ve ever had when things get really hard. Because they will. Life will happen, sad things will happen, and we need someone who has the
A relationship is meant to be a healing presence in our lives.
We all need support. Life can be hard. A relationship should help to bring calm to our nervous systems, not wreck them.
Your ex did the best they could with the emotional tools they had. And so did you.
You don’t have to forgive your ex. Because the goal isn’t forgiveness, it’s acceptance.
Accepting that heartbreak and loss are a part of life, and so is making mistakes.
But if you’re going to
There is something far more important than a person’s achievements, looks, job, attachment style, charm and humor:
It is a person’s awareness of themselves and their willingness to do what is necessary to grow into being a better person.
So if you’ve had a lot of
A broken heart over a broken relationship is some of the worst emotional pain we could ever feel. You have to grieve, process and lean on others.
Some of the best advice I’ve ever been given on this topic is:
Challenge yourself to stop romanticizing the person who broke your
Loving someone means:
You’ll have to embrace uncertainty. Because even the most secure relationship isn’t a guarantee. We change. They change. Life happens. We’re not obligated to keep loving each other, instead it is a choice we make to continue loving.
Healing happens when you stop trying so hard to figure out your ex.
You stop analyzing them, researching their “issues” and attempting to diagnose them.
Instead, you put the focus back on you, and make it a priority to figure out your patterns, your childhood conditioning,
Being single in many ways is easier than being in a relationship.
Many people tell me that when they’re single, they feel confident, secure, and “healed.” But once they’re in a relationship, all their fears and doubt come up.
This is because a relationship is where we go to
Praise your partner. Tell them they’re beautiful, hot, wonderful, brilliant and kind. We all need praise. This isn’t about low self-worth and a desperate need for validation. It’s about human relationships, and we need to be reminded, often, of how important we are to each other.
Relationships rarely end because of a lack of love. They more commonly end because people feel unseen and misunderstood by each other. They end because so many forget that their partner is a gift, not a given.
Heartbreak taught me:
That love isn’t enough. We have to feel safe with each other. We have to trust each other. We have to respect each other. And, we have to talk to each other.
No amount of love can make up for a lack of loving, honest and abundant communication.
Relationships rarely end because of a lack of love. They more often end because of a lack of connection. Small, daily habits are what keep us connected, habits such as:
Checking in during the day to say hi.
Greeting each other with a hug after we’ve been apart for the day.
You’re ready for a relationship when:
You understand that the perfect partner doesn’t exist. Everyone has an inner child, and everyone has baggage. Choosing wisely is choosing to love the one whose baggage doesn’t cause you deep suffering.
And, when you understand that loving,
If someone isn’t choosing you, choose yourself. No more trying to be enough. No more jumping through hoops to be chosen, no more trying to heal them into loving you and no more trying to convince them of your value. Life is hard enough, don’t make it harder by chasing love that
Someone needs to hear this:
You deserve a relationship that has both security and chemistry. Don’t settle. Wait until you don’t have to choose between the two.
The perfect partner who is always calm, regulated, mature and attentive does not exist.
Thankfully, we don’t need a perfect partner and we don’t need to be the perfect partner.
What we all need is a partner who is aware of their imperfections and who takes responsibility for
There is no “the one”. You choose who the one will be. And when you do, you’ll have to make that choice many, many times throughout your relationship. Love isn’t just a feeling, it’s an intentional practice.
A big lesson I learned about love later in life is that we just can’t make a relationship work with someone who doesn’t have the capacity to self-reflect and understand what patterns they need to work on in order to make their relationship loving and peaceful.
No one actually looks forward to a hard conversation. But, no relationship is worth keeping if you have to lie, withhold your truth, or avoid in order to keep it. You have to be brave and have the hard conversation. You have to ask the questions that scare you and be willing to
A hard yet necessary lesson we eventually learn about relationships is that we cannot bargain with the person who doesn’t want to commit.
We cannot convince anyone to love us, choose us, or stay.
Love is a skill that requires mindfulness and self-awareness. Love isn’t just a feeling, but is also an intentional practice of action and choice.
To love well means we have to get over our egos and take ownership of our energy.
Because a healthy relationship is built, and it
The biggest and most impactful lesson I learned about healing after heartbreak is this: if someone leaves, their part in your story has ended. But your story continues.
Always remember that.
Too many people give their power away in relationships because they never learned how to value themselves. They’ll put their lives on hold while they anxiously wait for someone’s text. They’ll abandon their personal goals for a relationship that isn’t fulfilling. They wait to be
One of the hardest lessons we will have to learn in life is how to let go and accept when someone’s part in our story is over.
Not every relationship is meant to last. Sometimes, people come into our lives to wake us up, not stay forever.
One of the most significant lessons I learned about love, relationships, and breaking up is how to let go.
To let people leave if they want to.
If someone believes their happiness is somewhere else, I’m not holding them back from finding it.
I’m never going to make my life
Growth is when you decide to no longer pursue the attention of someone who isn’t emotionally available, and instead you pursue your dreams.
Because that’s what happens when you spend all your time and energy trying to convince someone to love you and choose you: you end up
Loving someone long-term requires a lot of patience, communication, and acceptance. All these things we get better at when we’re willing to do some inner work and learn new skills.
It’s time to normalize being single - regardless of age.
A lot of people have been in unhealthy relationships and want to work on themselves and break patterns.
Some are loving the freedom to explore what makes them happy and fulfilled.
And, many people are patiently waiting
If you’re generous and empathetic:
Don’t change.
These are amazing qualities. They give you strong character. Just learn how to balance it with boundaries.
Learn how to give to yourself, how to receive, and stop over-giving to selfish people out of fear of abandonment.
Maybe you’ll look back at a relationship and think:
“I cannot believe I allowed that to happen.”
It happened because you were in a trance, trying your best to make it work and to be enough.
Now you’re awake and the best thing you can do is stay awake, learn the lesson, and
7 relationship superpowers:
Self-awareness.
Wanting to be better and grow.
Accountability.
Sense of humor - especially about self.
Compassion.
Gratitude.
Listening skills.
The road to relationship hell is paved with charming people who haven’t worked on themselves and therefore have little self-awareness, don’t communicate, and think love is a feeling, not a verb.
I wish more people realized that falling in love is the easy part. Staying in love demands patience, accountability, creativity, communication and self-awareness. Staying in love is a skill.
There’s no perfect person out there waiting to be found by you. But there’s certainly those who are much better for you than others. My hope is that you choose the one who lights up when they see you and hugs you tightly when you need it most. And most of all, I hope you choose
Never date someone who you think you need to heal or reform. You need a partner, not a patient.
But remember, it’s not about them. It’s about you breaking the pattern of needing someone to be different, and yet still remaining in the relationship, hoping they’ll change for you.
The next time you find yourself obsessing about someone you barely know, waiting anxiously for their text or their call..
Realize that what you’re longing for is not actually this person.
You’re yearning for the feeling of aliveness that comes with meeting someone new.
They
Giving reassurance is an essential part of a relationship, because the goal is to stay connected emotionally.
Yes, having to constantly reassure someone who is chronically insecure is exhausting.
But it’s also exhausting to never receive reassurance from the one person whom
The best relationships will have conflict. But that said, a relationship is supposed to be a healing presence in our lives. It’s ultimately supposed to feel good in our bodies - our nervous systems should feel calm around each other, not wrecked. All strong relationships have a
A “situation-ship” is a non-committal relationship that involves one person who wants more and another person who either doesn’t want more or who cannot give more.
When we choose to remain connected to someone who can never give us the commitment we want, we interfere with not
At the core of what makes two people compatible is the shared belief about what makes a life well-lived. If you can’t agree on this, you may be able to have a great romance, but you won’t be able to build a great life together.
The road to relationship hell is paved with charming people who have weak character:
They’re dishonest, unreliable, and think love is just a feeling, not an intentional practice of action and choice.
If you want to make your relationship healthier, focus on your own behavior. Show up as the person and partner you want to be in a relationship.
Be the love you wish to amplify.
You want to know that even if it doesn’t work out, you did the work and you showed up.
Reassurance is a beautiful and essential part of being in a relationship. For example, it takes so little to say, “I’m in an off mood today, but I promise it’s not you. I love you.”
Simple, powerful, and necessary for a healthy relationship.
People think that “The One” will make them happy and fulfilled.
It’s not true.
Someone can make us smile, make us laugh and make us feel good, but no one can fulfill us.
Fulfillment is an inside job.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about love:
We can write down all the important traits we want in a partner, raise our standards and not settle, but if we don’t search inside ourselves and strive to become the person who we’d want to be in a relationship with, we won’t
People avoid uncomfortable conversations to “keep the peace”. But peace isn’t the goal of a relationship. Love is. And when we love someone, we have the hard conversations in service of that love.
A life-changing lesson I learned about relationships later in life is that when you deepen and strengthen the relationship with yourself, who you’re attracted to changes. You realize that what you want is someone with similar values, self-awareness and integrity.
People say that the best relationships consist of two healed and whole people coming together.
It’s a great theory, but it’s not realistic because no one is ever fully healed.
We’re all working through something.
Instead, the best relationships are built by two people who are
Never chase anyone.
Instead, be honest about your feelings, ask where they stand, and accept it if they are not on the same page.
Never accept crumbs.
Instead, ask directly for what you need. If they can’t give at the level you give, move on.
Let whoever wants to leave, leave.
Most relationship problems are caused by two people living inside their heads, not communicating, and making each other the problem. At this point, they’re no longer in a relationship with each other - they’re in a relationship with a story they’ve created about each other.
You will have chemistry with various people throughout your life.
Some of those people won’t be good for you.
Some will.
The difference lies in who you decide to emotionally invest in - who you decide to open to and allow into your life and heart.
You will always have that
Let’s normalize choosing to be single. A lot of people have been in toxic relationships and want to work on themselves and break patterns. And, many people want to be patient until they meet someone who is truly aligned with them because they know what it’s like to be in the
Falling in love and building a relationship based on love are two different things. Anyone can fall in love. Staying in love is an intentional practice that regularly demands overcoming our egos.
A relationship is meant to make you happier, not happy.
To add value to your life, not save you from your life.
To increase positive emotion not protect you from negative emotion.
To add ease to your path, not burden your path.
No one can walk your path for you or face your
Before you marry someone, (or commit comparably) you have to know 3 things:
1. how the pains and joys of their childhood show up in their adulthood.
2. If their dreams, longings, and goals align with yours.
3. If by being together, life is overall more meaningful.
Rejection is one of the hardest things we’ll ever feel. Someone basically says, no. I don’t choose you. It’s not you who I want to love.
But, rejection is also a part of life.
There will be some people who won’t want to commit to you.
Your job isn’t to sell them on why you’re
Much of dating culture today is shallow and avoidant.
People have never been more starved for meaningful connection while simultaneously settling for casual, meaningless “situations”.
They crave to be seen and yet are too fearful to open up and be vulnerable.
So, be
People almost always tell us who they are early on in a relationship. And if someone is showing weak character - if they lie, are unkind, blame you for their problems, or their actions never match their words, you better pay attention because if you ignore that, you will
Emotional safety - which includes trust and respect, is foundational in secure relationships. Without it, we really don’t have a relationship. We simply have stress and chaos.
That said, we need more than only safety in order to feel fulfilled. So, first and foremost be a safe
Growth is when you decide to no longer pursue the attention of someone who isn’t emotionally available to you.
Instead, you take all that energy and pursue your dreams.
There are some things that are more important than a person’s achievements, looks, job, and charm:
It is a person’s awareness of themselves and their willingness to do what is necessary to grow into being a better person.
It is their character.
After 10 years of working with couples, here’s 3 practices that I’ve seen transform a relationship without fail:
1. They make each other’s needs as important as their own.
2. They praise each other often - to each other, to their friends, to their families.
3. They’re warm
You do not have to be completely healed to be in a relationship. You are a work in progress, and you can continue to have struggles and feel not enough sometimes. Perfection does not drive relationship success. Maturity, self-awareness and kindness do.
Healthy and secure relationships require people to have the necessary self-analysis to be able to ask themselves two questions when there’s conflict:
“How have I contributed to this problem?”
“How can I contribute to the solution?”
This is self-awareness and accountability -
Compassion is one of the most important relationship skills. We all have a story. We all have pain. So as much as it’s true that we are responsible for ourselves, being in a relationship means we are also responsible for not being a continuation of the part of our partner’s story
Never bargain with the person who wants to leave. You have to let go because if you don’t, you’re only trading in your fear of losing them with the pain of knowing you had to convince them to stay.
The foundation of a relationship is trust and safety - and a lesson I learned later in life is that you can’t rush this. Building a sturdy foundation takes a lot of experiences together, a lot of tough conversations and time to test the level of loyalty and respect you have for
A key difference between couples who make it and the ones who don’t:
The ones who make it expect to sometimes be bored in their relationship.
They also expect conflict and having to work hard at times to stay connected.
But, they would rather go through the ups and downs
When you fall in love with someone’s potential instead of who they legitimately are now, you’ll inevitably become their coach, therapist, and parent. You don’t want this.
And they don’t want it either.
Relationships need warmth.
Warmth in the form of sweet gestures, attentiveness, a loving touch and a warm smile.
It’s the little things that matter the most.
It’s not your job to try to convince someone to choose you. Your only job is to be the protector of your heart and of your boundaries. Choose wisely when deciding who to invest your energy in.
How people end their relationships matter and is a reflection of their character. Unless it’s an unsafe situation, always end a relationship with honesty, respect and care.
A lesson I learned about love later in life is that true love and trust take time to build. You need a lot of experiences together, a lot of tough conversations, and time to test the level of loyalty and respect you have for each other. The first year of a relationship is
You don’t have to forgive the ex who hurt you.
Because the goal is not to forgive them.
It’s to forget them.
It’s to forget them enough that they no longer have a hold on you. So that they no longer pre-occupy you emotionally.
Instead, focus on forgiving yourself.
Forgive
You could meet someone who goes to therapy, knows their attachment style, does yoga, meditates.. and they can still be immature and unavailable.
These things are not “red flags” of course, but they’re also not a guarantee that someone is right for YOU.
So, forget all those
The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.
Even if we have our health, money in the bank, and we love our job, if our relationship is struggling, we’re going to wake up every morning feeling lost and stressed.
This is why the most important thing we