Healthy relationships need more than love. They require freedom, effort, growth, and the willingness to never take each other for granted.
I’ve been thinking lately about what actually makes a relationship authentic.
We often describe a good relationship as one built on harmony, acceptance, kindness and love, and of course those things matter. But I wonder if there are two other ingredients we don’t talk about nearly enough: choice, and effort.
For much of history, many people, particularly women, didn’t have much choice about whether they stayed in a marriage. Marriages were sometimes arranged for economic, social or family reasons. Even in the United States, there were generations of women who had limited access to careers, property and financial independence. Leaving a marriage could mean losing financial security, social standing or even access to their children. That doesn’t mean those marriages were incapable of love. Many undoubtedly were deeply loving. But it raises an interesting question: does love mean something different when we know the other person is free to leave, and chooses to stay? I believe it does.
Staying Is Different When Staying Is a Choice
There is something profoundly meaningful about knowing you don’t have to be here, and neither do I, and yet today, we are choosing each other. Commitment isn’t less meaningful because two people are independent enough to leave. I think it can become more meaningful, because the relationship isn’t being held together by dependency, obligation, fear or the absence of alternatives. It is being held together because two people continue to find value in what they have created together.
But there is another side to this. Choosing someone once isn’t the same as continuing to choose them.
Security Shouldn’t Become Complacency
One of the gifts of a long-term relationship is comfort. We know each other’s routines. We know how the other person takes their coffee. We develop our little jokes and traditions, and we know who will handle which responsibilities. We don’t have to wonder every morning whether the relationship still exists, and that security is wonderful.
But sometimes security quietly turns into assumptions. We stop saying thank you because, of course, they’ll do it. We stop asking questions because we assume we already know the answers. We stop noticing the small things our partner does because they’ve been doing them for years. We give strangers our patience and our partner whatever patience happens to be left over at the end of the day. And sometimes we stop being curious about the person beside us because we believe we already know them.
That’s where comfort can become dangerous. There is a difference between feeling safe enough to relax in a relationship and becoming so comfortable that we stop tending to it. Choice alone isn’t enough. We can freely choose someone and then gradually stop actively choosing them, one skipped thank you and one unasked question at a time. Security is healthy. Complacency is something else entirely, and it’s worth being honest with ourselves about which one we’re actually living in.
What “Doing the Work” Really Means
When I talk about doing the work in a relationship, I don’t mean constantly analyzing it. I don’t mean every disagreement requires a three-hour conversation, and I certainly don’t mean walking on eggshells trying to keep another person happy. That version of “the work” makes it sound like a chore list, something to check off so the relationship keeps running. I don’t think that’s it at all.
What I actually mean is simpler and, honestly, harder to sustain: it’s continuing to notice the person you’re with. Continuing to value them out loud, not just in your head. Continuing to respond to who they are today rather than who you decided they were years ago. It’s less about maintenance and more about attention. A house needs maintenance because it’s static. A person doesn’t need to be maintained. They need to be seen.
That shows up in small, unglamorous ways. It’s asking How are we doing? every now and then instead of waiting until something is terribly wrong. It’s noticing when something has shifted in your partner and getting curious about it instead of assuming it will pass. It’s taking responsibility when your behavior has affected them, and actually saying so. None of that is maintenance in the mechanical sense. It’s presence. It’s choosing, again and again, to keep looking at the person beside you instead of the idea of them you formed a long time ago.
And that matters because the person you chose ten or twenty years ago isn’t frozen in time. Neither are you. People grow. Priorities change. Bodies change. Careers change. Families change. Dreams change. Loss changes us, and aging changes us. A healthy relationship has to make room for two evolving human beings, and that requires curiosity. The question isn’t Who have I decided you are based on the person you’ve always been. The question is Who are you now? That’s the work. Not managing the relationship, but continuing to notice the person in it.
Love Isn’t a Lifetime Membership We Earn Once
Perhaps one of the easiest traps in a long relationship is believing that because someone loves us, we no longer have to treat the relationship with the same care we once did. We would never say it that way, but sometimes we live that way.
Early in a relationship, we notice things. We say thank you. We ask questions. We make an effort. We want to know what the other person is thinking, and we pay attention to how our behavior affects them. Then somewhere along the way, I love you can quietly become You know I love you. There’s a difference. Love shouldn’t have to be constantly proven, but it does need to continue to be expressed, experienced and practiced. The fact that someone has chosen us doesn’t give us permission to stop giving them reasons to feel good about that choice. Not because we should live in fear that they might leave, but quite the opposite: because we value that they are free to stay.
Healthy Relationships Aren’t Supposed to Remove Every Discomfort
We sometimes imagine the ideal relationship as one in which two people rarely disagree, never disappoint each other and instinctively understand one another’s needs. I’m not convinced that would necessarily create better human beings. We don’t need betrayal in order to appreciate loyalty. We don’t need cruelty in order to understand kindness. But we do need the freedom to choose differently for our choices to have meaning. Generosity means something because I could have been selfish. Patience means something because I could have lost my temper. Forgiveness means something because I could have held onto resentment. And commitment means something because staying is something I continue to choose. Those choices are part of how relationships help us grow.
There Has to Be a “You” and a “Me”
Healthy relationships don’t require two people to become one person. There still has to be a you and a me. You have your history, preferences, fears, opinions, boundaries and needs. I have mine. Sometimes they align beautifully, and sometimes they don’t, and that’s where some of our most important growth happens.
I have to learn how to understand someone whose experience is different from mine without requiring them to become more like me. I can disagree with you without dismissing you. I can love you without controlling you. I can compromise without abandoning myself. I can hear your needs without assuming that meeting every one of them is my responsibility. And perhaps most importantly, I can accept who you are without quietly making my love conditional on who I hope you will eventually become. That’s a very different kind of acceptance.
Relationships Give Us the Opportunity to Become Better at Loving
I recently wrote about the difference between our relationships with pets and our relationships with people. Our pets can teach us something incredibly important: that we are lovable. But healthy human relationships ask something more of us. They teach us how to love.
Human relationships require us to navigate misunderstanding, disappointment, competing needs, boundaries, vulnerability, repair and forgiveness. We will get some of it wrong, and that’s part of being human. The goal isn’t to eliminate every opportunity to hurt, disappoint or misunderstand one another. The goal is to become people who know what to do when those things happen. Can I take responsibility? Can I repair it? Can I listen without immediately defending myself? Can I recognize that your feelings are valid even when I experienced the situation differently? Can I remain myself while allowing you to remain yourself? Can I continue to appreciate you after the novelty has worn off and ordinary life has taken over? Those are learned skills, and perhaps that’s one of the great purposes of relationships. Not simply to make us happy, but to give us opportunities to become more thoughtful, more accountable, more patient, more self-aware, and ultimately, better at loving another human being.
Maybe the Goal Isn’t Perfect Harmony
Perhaps the healthiest relationship isn’t one where two people never experience conflict. Maybe it is one where neither person has to surrender themselves in order to maintain the relationship, and neither person takes the other’s presence for granted. There is room for disagreement. There is room for boundaries. There is room for growth. There is room to say, This hurt me. There is room to say, I was wrong. There is room to say, We’ve gotten disconnected, let’s find our way back to each other. And there is even room to recognize when a relationship no longer honors who we are becoming, because without the freedom to say no, I’m not sure our yes carries quite the same meaning.
That may be one of the most beautiful things about a healthy adult relationship. I am not with you because I have no other choice. I am with you because I do. But perhaps love asks one thing more of us: don’t simply choose me, continue to see me. And tomorrow, we have the opportunity to do both again.
A Coaching Question to Consider
Instead of asking only, Do I feel loved in this relationship, perhaps we should occasionally ask ourselves this: if my partner experienced our relationship only through my actions, not through what I know I feel inside, would they know that I still value them, appreciate them and choose them? And then maybe one more: have I become comfortably secure in this relationship, or have I become comfortable enough to take it for granted? There is an important difference.
Warmly,
Molly A. Summers, P.C.C.
Life Coach, Author & Workforce Development Coach
Thank you for spending this time with me inside Journal for Focus, Feelings & Follow-Through
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