5 Signs You Are Ready For A Serious Relationship

We give you five main factors to recognize your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to preparing for a serious relationship.

When it comes to love and relationships, one thing we all need to understand is — we’ve got to be ourselves and get to know what our head and heart demands from us. If you want to just have casual fun and go on dates every other night, that’s cool. But if you feel like you are leaning more towards a serious and committed relationship, that’s more than okay as well! You’ve got to do you and not what the social pressure demands from you.

For those of you who are trying to build up their character for a serious relationship, we’ve written a clear guide to analyzing the readiness for a serious relationship with our friends at the Relate Foundation.

It’s a unique organization that helps people prepare for love by evaluating past behaviors and identifying potential trouble spots in future relationships. Through years of research, they have found the key factors in helping someone understand if they can expect success in their future relationships. In this article, we give you the five main factors to help you recognize your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to preparing for a serious relationship.

1. Your attachment style

Are you just trying to have someone around because you don’t feel like being lonely, or are you ready to have a partner to share your life with? Being committed means understanding your partner’s needs and dedicating your time and energy to meet their expectations as much as they will be meeting yours. Your attachment to your future partner needs to be based on mutual respect and love, and unless you understand, it’s not just about making you feel loved and less lonely. You are willing to invest your time, emotional support, and energy into someone else’s best interests, you’re not ready for something serious just yet.

2. Your emotional readiness

If your next relationship partner wants to take the next step, is that something you could commit to? Or are you looking for something casual? One sure sign of you being ready to move on to something more serious is feeling like you are craving more intimacy and connection from life. If you fantasize about going on the rides with your partner, celebrating their successes, and supporting each other through struggles, you are ready to take it one step further.

3. Your mental health

Mental health is one of the most valuable factors in any person’s search for life happiness, and it’s no surprise that a healthy mind can add more clarity and joy to your partner’s life as well. Depression and Anxiety, on the other hand, can deeply impact your partner. Still, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a relationship if you are suffering from a mental health problem, or that your partner will suffer from it. If these are things you are bringing into a relationship, it’s okay as long as you are aware, so you can treat them, and your partner can understand where it’s coming from. This way, there will be no misunderstanding of the feelings which can be out of your sphere of control, and your partner will be aware that sometimes you can go through a tough time, and it’s their opportunity to be present and express their love by supporting you.

4. You are more curious than anxious.

One of the signs that you are mentally ready for things to get serious is when you start to see dating as it is — an amazing chance to experience something truly wholesome with your partner and not a scary threat to your single life freedom. You need to see them as human beings with interests and life that fascinates you, and not just an image of the future you have pictured for yourself. Once you begin to become curious about people instead of being anxious about what they might think, you can consider diving in a bit more.

5. Your heart is telling you it’s right.

Sometimes the best check factor we can trust — is our own gut. If it feels right to start a serious relationship, someone, it most likely is. Don’t hesitate to start something new and life-changing because you’re afraid of a social label. With your inner work done right and your heart telling you that’s what you want: You’re probably ready.

— — — —

These are only a tiny part of what the Relate Foundation knows about assessing your relationship readiness. Some ways to learn these things are seeing a therapist, keeping a journal or diary where you can be open with yourself, or taking the READY assessment, where you can get a detailed evaluation of yourself and your readiness for love.

We hope this list has helped you check where you are on the readiness spectrum, figure out what you want, and good luck with reaching your love goals, whatever they may be!