My first long-term relationship — powerful relationship lessons that I’ve learned in 1,5 years

One and a half years ago N and I became friends and quickly after fell in love with each other. Until that point, I had never been in a relationship for more than several weeks at a time. This experience has been very new for me and I would like to share the following powerful relationship lessons I’ve learned so far.

You don’t have to feel in love all the time

The first time I didn’t feel this bubbly feeling of overflowing love for my partner, I got really scared. What is if I didn’t love him anymore? What is if I shouldn’t plan a future with him anymore? What if we are just friends? I know many people who had broken up with their partners in a time of love uncertainty only to regret it majorly after a couple of weeks or months.

Someone who has been in many partnerships before might say “Gosh, how immature.” or “How can one be so impulsive?” but from my experience, especially when it’s your first serious relationship, a lot of people don’t know the waves of emotions that can show up. You only hear about people in love and people who fell out of love and therefore broke up.

What I have learned though and what I wish someone had told me about before is that when you come out of the honeymoon phase there will be times when you can feel a bit neutral towards your partner. Maybe because there are other topics that are needing more attention at the moment: like work, family issues, your mental health, or your physical health.

What I think is important to understand is that you didn’t stop loving your partner. Right now, you are just not in the place to feel the love fully. I can speak for myself, my boyfriend, and many friends, that it is normal to feel this way and that the same way you might not feel in love for a couple of hours or days you will be feeling overflowing with love again after that moment has passed. And then after that again you might not. This ever-moving curve will go up and down and that is completely okay — if not beautiful.

Time without your partner is important to stay connected with your true self

It is easy, especially when you’re just falling in love, to only see yourself through the eyes of your partner. They love you for your best qualities and it’s nice to be only seen and reminded of those. Also, I believe being with your partner sometimes can be like binge-watching a series, to avoid dealing with your emotions non-related or even related to them. I have found that time by myself is essential in order to connect with myself again, with my thoughts, and emotions. Otherwise, I will just put them aside and bypass them through receiving love and affection. In the long run, time spent alone will only better my relationship with my partner because I can resolve my own stuff first, instead of putting it onto him.

And this obviously goes both ways. When your partner is having a bad day, it can be easy to get caught up in their emotions. It is easy to start acting like it’s your responsibility to make them happy again, but it is not. In moments like this, I believe it is good to check in with yourself to find out what are your emotions and what are their emotions. Asking yourself questions like that and being in your own space doing so, enables you to keep a clear head and help both of you to realign with oneself.

It is okay for both of you to change

Some aspects that your partner fell in love with you for, might not be permanent or always sustainable. For example, N loved that I was such a healthy and energized person when we met. Turns out that quickly after, I got Mono and struggled with my health for more than 12 months after that. At the time, I pressured myself so much to be the partner he fell in love with, that I actually became only sicker because I wouldn’t give my body the time and space to just feel ill. Instead, I tried to bypass how I was truly feeling, constantly scared that my immune system would betray me, needing to stay in bed (sleeping) and not be the active and healthy person he fell in love with.

I also have friends who meet their partners when they are in a party phase of their life. They believe the other person will only love them if they go out every single weekend, but really their semester break is over and they actually now need to sleep at eleven so they can get up early and get their work done.

My experience is that by constantly trying to be the person you were, you are really just scared of not being loved for who you really are at this stage of your life. Or worse, you yourself are not loving and accepting who you really are. BUT it’s important to remember that you are equal parts in this relationship. Also, it is important to remember that people change. How sad would it be if we grew and changed only until the point that we happily fell in love with someone to then just stopped? And really who is more lovable, a person who is content with where they are and where they are going, or someone who is trying to fit themselves into a box that they obviously don’t fit into, only to please the other person? And yes, your partner probably does notice that you’re not being your authentic self.

When you are feeling intimidated by your partner, see it as inspiration

When you have chosen your partner, they most likely inherit lots of qualities that you fancy about them. Some of them similar to your own but some of them could be very different from yours. Maybe they are able to connect with people instantly, they are super creative, they have their own successful business or they are highly emotionally intelligent. But you on the other hand connect with people after a while, you are not as obviously creative or haven’t explored your creativity as much, you might work in corporate or are still in school and you don’t consider yourself as emotionally intelligent. That can make us feel very intimidated and we might start comparing ourselves with our partners to the point of feeling insecure around them. I’ve definitely been there and it’s not a nice place to be in. But what I’ve learned for myself is that when you change your perspective and you see the qualities of your partner as an inspiration for your growth, you can turn those insecurities into a drive to become the person you’re desiring to be. By that, I don’t mean become your partner. I mean lean into the qualities that you admire about them, explore them for yourself. You would probably not feel so triggered if it wasn’t something you didn’t want for yourself. Oftentimes I would feel triggered or insecure when N would connect with new people with such ease through small talk and I felt like I was missing out on important encounters because I felt like I couldn’t do the same. Really those feelings were showing me that I wanted to connect with more people and make interesting friends that would widen my horizon. The reason why you might feel intimidated is because you believe that you are something less than the other person. That means that you obviously value the quality of the other person and would want to see it in yourself.

A counterexample: I don’t feel insecure around the way my partner produces music even though I am not at all skilled at producing myself. I can appreciate his producing quality but I don’t admire to find that quality in myself. Therefore, I don’t feel triggered by it.

Not everything revolves around “boys”

When I was single about 90% of my conversations revolved around boys. Who was I seeing? How attached or unattached was I? How attached or unattached was he? (That question probably came first actually.) Where is the next opportunity to see the boy? What is the right time to text? Do I even like the boy? And so on and so on.

Two years later I’ve gotten to the point that I speak and think about lots of other things like how to implement new habits into your life, how to connect to your intuition, how is it to be a woman in an all-men sales team, what is the difference between an asset and a liability and so on and so on. What I’m meaning to say is that I’m now at the point that boys don’t take over most of my brain capacity anymore but instead I can put my energy into topics that light me up and help me grow. I wish I had done that much earlier in my life but I guess that wasn’t my path and in making my life about men I learned the lessons I needed to be in the relationship I’m in now.

But I’d still like to encourage people to put time into themselves and their own education first, instead of always looking to the validation of the other sex. It feels very liberating and in the long run, only ups your chances for a healthy partnership.

In many moments I would have benefited so much from these few insights, but often I had to figure them out by myself. I’m hoping by sharing my thoughts on those topics I was able to help others in similar situations to look at them from a different lens.

Thank you for reading.