Are relationships supposed to be hard? How much work should a relationship be? And what are you supposed to work on anyway?
Firstly: Yes, healthy, close relationships do take work, and sometimes that will be hard.
And - relationships shouldn’t always be hard, because that means issues aren’t being dealt with effectively. Relationships should overall add value to your life, not be a constant source of drain and stress.
Despite the romantic notion, love is not enough and cannot be the only thing holding a relationship together. Love should never be the excuse for putting up with constant turmoil or abusive behaviour. If there are challenges, a healthy relationship includes a commitment from each partner to address their contribution to the problem.
Relationships shouldn’t always be easy either, as that also means issues aren’t being dealt with.
Couples who say they ‘never fight’ are often both conflict-avoidant. This can mean that the inevitable differences and difficulties between two people who share their lives might be being ignored instead of raised and resolved. Inevitably, the suppressed issues end up coming out one way or another, whether that’s a gradual drifting apart and the death of true intimacy or a sudden explosion.
What are the qualities of a good relationship?
A healthy, connected, loving relationship generally involves these skills and qualities:
Interdependence: Being able to trust and rely on one another and building a shared life together over time, as well as maintaining your independence and individual interests, friendships, dreams, and sense of self.
Communication: Being able to raise and discuss concerns, differences, hurts and disappointments in the relationship in a way that leads to repair, a way forward,
and stronger connection.
Mutuality: Two-way respect, support, and willingness to compromise and grow.
Trust: Founded on consistency and keeping agreements with each other.
Equality: An overall sense of balance and fairness in the relationship.
Emotional regulation: Taking responsibility for, managing, and communicating your feelings effectively.
Shared values and vision: Although you do not have to have identical values and goals for the future, a sense of shared guiding principles supports cohesiveness and decision-making.
Enjoyment of each other: The work of a relationship should be balanced with the
enjoyment of each others’ company that brought you together in the first place.
New relationships vs long-term relationships
Few relationships start off with all of these qualities truly in place from the get-go. However, sometimes people mistake the early days and months of a relationship (when everyone is on their best behaviour) for what a long-term relationship should be like.
A new relationship doesn't take much work, but it is not a mature relationship. It’s fun and easy, you’re acting like your best self and overlooking the other person’s faults, you haven’t hurt or disappointed each other yet, and you’re getting all the lovely brain chemicals that are produced when you first get together that help a couple to bond. You might want to spend all your time together and can't get enough of each other.
This does not and cannot sustain. As a relationship matures it moves through stages where each person returns to a more sustainable balance of togetherness and individuality. The 'best-behaviour' impression management starts to drop, some of our less-shiny habits and qualities start to come out, and differences start to emerge and have to be negotiated.
People who hold the mistaken belief that the early stage is how relationships should continue to be find themselves either panicking at the change in perceived closeness or perennially dissatisfied as the excitement wanes, and are more likely to have affairs or hop from relationship to relationship. They chase the highs and promise of a new partner, and miss out on the depth of connection that is unlocked in a healthy long-term relationship.
Why are even good relationships hard sometimes?
The qualities of a good relationship listed above involve what could be considered more advanced-level skills in being a relational human. You, like most of us, probably find one or more aspects of being a human more difficult, and so does your partner. This inevitably leads to areas of misunderstanding, not-so-great behaviour and conflict.
As well as your differing strengths and weaknesses with relationship skills, there are inevitable challenges in sharing your life with another person. Some of these difficulties include:
We are different in what makes us feel loved:
We each come with our own user-operating manual for what makes us feel loved and unloved. These manuals are written by the families we grew up in, and some of the instructions have been passed down for generations.
The manual is so implicit that many people can’t articulate what is in it. It’s just what they believe love to be. They can’t put words to it, but they know when they feel loved and when they don’t, and they show love to others in the ways they've learned.
The problem is that you and your partner likely have different operating manuals. When you try and show love the way you know how, your partner might not even recognise it as love, and vice versa.
Unless your manuals happen to be similar, we often have to teach people how to show their love for us, and we have to learn to show love in a way that is recognisable and meaningful for our partner. A partner who is willing to be taught and is excited to learn your language of love is showing you that they are willing to grow into being a wonderful partner for you.
Relationships go through hard seasons:
Most relationships also have hard seasons. After the birth of a child is a common one. When one or both partners are grieving is another. The ‘mid-life crisis’ and ‘seven-year itch’ are not just myths but commonly cited causes of relationship breakdown.
On a smaller scale, the balance and fairness in a relationship might fluctuate too as one partner has more demands on their time, energy or health. In these instances it is useful to zoom out and look at equality over a greater time-frame than whether the relationship feels fair over any given week.
Relationships require us to be willing to change:
One phrase that I occasionally hear from people that grinds my gears as a therapist is “It’s just the way I am.” Sure, it’s the way you are right now. But you are not set in stone. We can all shape up a bit for the people we love.
Generally, what people are asking from their partners is not a personality transplant anyway. They are asking for changes in habits, patterns, and skills as they relate to the list of good relationship qualities above.
Sometimes one partner will contribute more to the relationship issues or a particular problem than the other, and that’s to be expected when partners have different backgrounds, skills and deficits. Sometimes you’ll be the one who needs to make more of a change in one area, and sometimes your partner will. Not every issue will be exactly 50/50 and that’s ok.
Committing to relational growth
Relationships can provide one of the most prime opportunities for self-awareness, healing and growth. Ideally each partner can help bring out the best in the other, but there is also nothing like an intimate connection for showing you where your rough edges and relational weaknesses are. In this way, a healthy relationship supports both partners to become better people. Be willing to put in some work, and find a partner who is willing to do the work to have a truly meaningful relationship with you.
And it's also super important for the longevity of a relationship to be willing to have fun together, bring humour and lightness to some of your less-serious clashes, and enjoy your partner as someone who adds value to your life rather than seeing your relationship as a constant work-in-progress.
You don't have to be in couples therapy or even in a relationship at all to reflect on your own relational skills and begin to strengthen your abilities. A lot of good work can be done within your own self, focusing on what you have brought to your current or past romantic relationships, friendships, or family interactions. No matter your romantic relationship status, there are ways to build skill and confidence in relating to other humans.
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