When you’re in the right relationship, you are willing to put it all on the line, because you just know this is the right person for you. You also talk about your sex life. You don’t hide things from your partner, hold grudges or lose yourself in the relationship.
Read the full “31 Ways to Know You’re in the Right Relationship,” written by one of Vixely’s most beloved writers, Margaret Wheeler Johnson, of HuffingtonPost Women, and see below for Vixely’s favorite excerpts:
You don’t…
1. Fear it.
If you’re afraid of commitment, best to work that out before you put yourself in a situation where it’s hoped you’ll eventually commit.
2. Hide anything more significant than a surprise party from each other.
That includes exes, cheating, debt, STDs, chronic illness, felonies, whether you want a marriage and/or children, genetic abnormalities (if you both want kids), a strong desire to live somewhere else, professional failures and successes, doubts about your sexual orientation, a strong preference for un-vanilla sex.
The truth will come out, and if you’re with someone you feel the need to conceal any of this from, he or she probably isn’t right.
3. Think you’re superior.
If you feel that your significant other is your inferior in any way you know matters to you in a mate — morally, intellectually, socially, financially or professionally — you’re never going to respect him or her as much as you hope to be respected.
The best relationships make you feel that you’ve convinced a person more exceptional than you to love you.
4. Resent the other person’s success.
Professional jealousy can be as poisonous to a relationship as constantly thinking he or she is flirting with your best friend. It also suggests that you’re spending a lot of time comparing yourself to a person you supposedly adore, rather than sitting back and marveling at how amazing he or she is. In a good relationship, you quit (or refuse to ever engage in) the one-upmanship.
5. Depend on each other for things no one can or should supply.
If you’re looking to your significant other to resolve your emotional issues, make you more responsible/successful/adult, support you financially, improve your social standing, expand your group of friends, provide you with the family you never had, or make your parents finally accept you, it’s possible you shouldn’t be in a relationship at all, or at least not yet.
6. Lose yourself.
This is easier said than done, especially when the relationship is going really well. As tempting as it is to never leave the house (maybe never leave the bed), you keep doing the work, exercise, volunteering, socializing, networking, and daughtering you were doing before. Remember, these things made you the person Your Person fell in love with. They’re part of you. Don’t give them up for anyone. You can’t afford it.
You do…
7. Put it all on the line.
If you’re not risking having your heart broken, you’re not doing it right.
8. Inspire each other to be better.
A good relationship is galvanizing, not in the oh-my-god-I-met-this-amazing-person-I’d-better-hurry-up-and-fix-myself sense (thought there’s probably a little of that when you first start seeing anyone amazing) but in the way that knowing someone else believes in you makes you believe in yourself that much more. You want to prove yourself worthy of his or her confidence.
9. Talk about sex.
Most couples don’t instinctively know all of the ways to please each other. You have to talk about — or at least show — what you want. If you don’t know what you want, you need to figure that out, STAT (step 1? Get thee to Babeland). And after you have talked about it, you do it. Better.
10. Have object permanence.
Child psychologist Jean Piaget theorized that when babies get to be 8 or 9 months old, they begin to develop “object permanence,” the idea that an object doesn’t vanish when they can no longer see it.
In a good adult relationship, you know that you can go out into the world and do your thing, and the bond you’ve formed with the person you care about will be there when you get back.
This is also known as trust.
11. Divide and conquer.
You’re not identical, thank god, which probably means you have certain strengths and he or she has others. Someone is more organized, someone is more outgoing, someone is a born listener. Someone is better with money, someone is more creative. Someone is more adventurous in bed.
If you each play to your strengths, you in all likelihood remember a gift (possibly an inspired one), your home(s) look(s) great, the bills get paid on time, sex is endlessly fun, and you leave everyone at the party thoroughly charmed.
12. Just know.
Reader, marry that.
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