Relationship Advice from Two People Just Trying to Make it Work

Hi guys,

This week we are talking all about relationships with another Person. This is such a broad topic and I realized that I am in no way an expert of love or relationships. I am just someone who happens to be pretty happy with the one I am in. So instead of telling you what you should do, I figured I would just interview myself and my boyfriend and give you our perspective of what's working for us, and you can decide if it even fits within your life.

Backstory: T and I met on Tinder (ooooo). I had been casually dating at the time and T had gotten out of a relationship not too long before we started talking. We have now been together for 4 years, sharing two dogs and living together. We have been through a lot together in those 4 years, including supporting me through my ongoing health journey.

Question: When does a relationship become exclusive?

T: I think the best answer revolves around communication. With us it was pretty easy because you wanted to know where that line was so we were forced talked about it but that was ultimately the best for us. I think that talking about it is common, and that most people find it awkward to have those conversations. It’s hard to ask where you are in a relationship. Asking your partner especially early on, can make you feel that you are making yourself more vulnerable. In the end if you don't have communication and if you're not talking about what your feelings are, you're never going to know or agree on where you stand. 

Brittany: I would agree. I think it needs to be something that is agreed upon between two people. For me, part of knowing what we were gave me a sense of security of knowing "hey, we aren't going to see other people. We are going to focus on this and see where things go". I think people do need to make sure that they are determining those boundaries for themselves and not for the sake of others. I know part of my problem was that I didn't know how to define my relationship to other people, and I realize now this isn't something I should have been concerned with. Fun fact: when I asked T this he told us we were "super chill friends" because in his mind he wasn't ready to be at the level of boyfriend and girlfriend, but knew I needed a label. So that's what I got.

Question: What does your relationship with your partner look like?

T: It depends on who I am talking to of course. I typically don't talk about myself a lot as I tend to like my privacy. Although as introverted as I’m growing to be I’ve always been an extrovert so I truly have a million stories about B and I do tell a lot of them. I tell the good stories and the bad but in the end they are always positive. If I was to talk about our relationship I always paint it in a positive light. We are far from perfect but we know that we always work towards better communication. We stumble, but we're always there to help each other out. 

Brittany: It's definitely a different relationship for me. Almost as if I could describe it as "mature" if that is the right word. We don't really feel the need to do these grand gestures to show each other our love, we're all about the little things. Writing notes in each others lunches, packing extra treats, wiping the snow off each other's cars, picking things up for one another, and so forth. I don't know. It's just really supportive and safe to grow in. I definitely feel I have grown and changed in our time together, and he has never made me feel like my changing has been bad. It's been celebrated and we just keep encouraging each other and building each other up. We stumble, but we always try and find a way to work it out. I love it.

Question: What does a healthy relationship look like?

T: I look to my parents who have been together for the better part of 30 years, they have pretty good communication but not without their own flaws. I suppose I try to emulate most parts of their relationship into mine because that's what I know. I make boundaries that I saw my parents might not have had that they wished maybe they could have. And I tried to convey these boundaries early so that if something was needed to be brought up about it and it was important to me, it would be a conversation that wouldn't feel like I was blindsiding my partner. I think you need to be honest and upfront right away, and then you have the best chances of your relationship flowing a lot easier with everyone a lot happier.

Brittany: I think for one, communication needs to be there. I have learnt so much about the importance about communication through this relationship. I think you also need to have trust. I think we are in a good place in our relationship because there is this strong trust between us. I have seen a lot of relationships go sideways because there isn't that trust, and when it is broken, they don't take the time to address if they can ever honestly move forward with it. I don't think you need to agree about EVERYTHING with a partner to feel you're in a healthy relationship, but I do think you need to be able to communicate what you need from someone and have trust in them. 

Question: How do you build trust in a relationship?

T: TIME. It takes a lot of time. You have to take that extra effort in that person to get to know them and break down their walls they might have built up through past experiences. A lot of people have had a bad relationship or a few, it's the way of the world, especially these days. It's kind of a single serving world these days. I mean we probably have more one night stands than ever and there's so many ways to meet people like tinder or bumble. These apps are generally used for hooking up so there's a lot implied there and I think we lucked out on Tinder, but I don't think that's the usual story. So time and effort ultimately added with loyalty because that is a big part of it too. You want to be able to know you can tell someone something and trust them that they're not going to abuse your trust.

Brittany: I agree, time and effort. You need to want to take the time to be with this person and respect that this may take longer for them then it will for you. In our relationship I was at a space where I was kind of like "fuck it, if it works it works. If not, I move on". But I was only 22. T was older then me, had recently gotten out of a relationship, and had been burnt in the past. So I had to be okay with taking it at his pace. I mean, there were definitely times that it drove me mad, because I overthink everything, but I really liked him and wanted this to work. So I respected what he needed and just tried the best I could to show this could work and that I am different from people he has been with. 

Question: How do you know if it's true love?

T: Well that's a really hard question because affection is like dopamine and if you get it from the wrong places you can confuse yourself quite quickly into believing lust is love. I think it's just like drugs in that way, easy to get addicted but in this case, hard to know what you’re getting. I think inviting the wrong types of love into my life helped me kind of pick through the bullshit and then see what I kind of needed. (At this point Luna gets in the closet and we yelled at her and needed to redirect ourselves). So yeah, just prior mistakes and failures helped me learn kind of what I needed and then what was true to me. Because there were some experiences that I thought felt so real, but now I look back and think differently.

Brittany: I don't know if you ever really know. I think there are so many different types of love you will feel for different people and what might have felt like the most intense form of love you will ever feel in your life, might be proven wrong years down the road. I think maybe it's more about almost like an unconditional love. Like you will work through whatever it takes because there is something between you two that is so worth fighting for. And I think you have to believe that it is true love for it to be true love. 

Question: What do you think it takes to make a relationship last?

T: It’s a mix of all of those factors. You gotta have loyalty, you gotta have trust, a lot of effort, good communication. You have to have some common goals, like your end point needs to kind of be at the same location. Like for example, kids. Your life goals need to line up for the both of you for it all to kind of make sense for you to be in that relationship. That's why communication is so big. If you don't have these things laid out in the beginning, it's kind of hard to make it period.

Brittany: I agree. I think you need to have similar core values and overall life goals. If there are things that you strongly believe in and the person you are with doesn't live in line with that, you're always going to feel like you're choosing between yourself or your relationship. I think having those awkward tough conversations in the beginning, especially as we get older, is important, because you don't want to be 4 years in and find out they don't want to have kids, or they want to move to the other side of the world but your family means so much to you. And the only other thing I can think of in line with communication, is being willing to come to compromises when it is appropriate. I think we can all agree that there are tings we shouldn't have to compromise, but part of growing together is learning to shift your perspectives and be willing to include someone else's, or at least respect someone else's. T and I may not have the same outlook on religion for example, but we are willing to respect what we each believe in and we have found ways to compromise for each other, without compromising ourselves. 

Question: What's been the hardest part about this relationship?

T: Probably living with someone else, because I know how compulsive I can be. There are some things I've know as law because of the household I was brought up in. You do things differently because you were raised in a different household. You do some things better in someways and in my mind I do some things better. My Mom had a certain way she liked things done and I’ve become quite accustom to some of those habits. She was more effective in getting me to conform to her ways then I am of getting you interested in some of my ways. But it's also a thing I know is like ‘my thing’ that I know is important to me and it's not as important to you, so I always try to take that with a grain of salt. I am getting better at picking my battles, most of those little things aren’t worth even bringing up. Although at the same time I know I can be passive aggressive like putting your dishes to the side, because I do want you to get it done, but it's not making a big deal out of something that doesn't need to be. Like, make everything that's important to you important, but if it's not earth shattering then don't make it a big deal. 

Brittany: I will admit I am terrible at putting away clean dishes and it does drive him crazy. We are trying to work on that. But I think the hardest part for me is sharing a bed with him and two dogs now.... Just kidding, but it has been learning to communicate better. I can be quite opinionated but then also quite closed off. There's not really this in between and if we got in a disagreement my instinct was to do one or the other, and I was kind of forced to slow things down and talk it out. I'll admit I have done a lot of crying through those conversations because it felt hard to be this vulnerable and willing to self-reflect while I am also raging inside. But I'm grateful for this experience as well because I am seeing the benefits of it and I hope it just continues to get better no matter how hard it is. 

Question: What do you like about this relationship?

T: I mean, you're the love of my life. I like that. I trust you more than anyone else. I like that you're very very loyal. I can put you in any situation and I mean you might be naive at times when men are too nice to you, but once you realize the situation, you try and stop it right away. I feel very comfortable, very loved. Very happy. 

Brittany: There's so much to love about what we have. I mean I for one, love it because it is the most love I have felt for another human, and I feel so lucky that I get to experience this. That I genuinely feel like I found my person. I feel safe, cared for, supported, and empowered consistently with you. You never let me doubt myself and have loved me like no one else has. I love how much we have grown together in our time together and that we just continue to learn so much about each other. You're always so open and eager to learn and so am I, so it's just so great. And I feel there was always this natural connection we had. These playful moments mixed with serious moments. And I love that I am always supported. Even for things like my love for Christmas and Halloween and all my decorations. You always express strong feelings towards them, but you never make me take them down or throw them out, so that's cool. 

Question: Do you think you and your partner share the same values?

T: I think that we share most of the same values, but I don't think we need to share all of the same values and I don't think we do. I think it's actually quite important to be different. I think on the general consensus we are the same and we have the same moral compass and I think that's more important, more or less. 

Brittany: I think he hit it on the nail. And I think even in our differences we are again able to be respectful of that and there not so different that they completely are out of line with our core values. 

Question: How important is physical chemistry to you?

T: I think it is very important. Body language is 80% of all communication, so if you don't have an attraction to your partner, 80% of your communication is kind of negative. If you're attracted to them you're going to notice things way more and if you're not attracted to them, you don't care as much. I guess I've never been in a relationship where I haven't been attracted to the person because I think it wouldn't work for me. And I don't think it needs to be attractive to the world, it just needs to be attractive to me.

Brittany: I think it's important. I think it's what is going to really help move you forward from a friendship to a relationship. Plus if you aren't attracted to someone, what's to stop you from looking and exploring someone else that does catch your eye? I think it's a natural part of relationships and an important one for intimacy. 

Question: If you could give any advice, what would you give?

T: Slow everything down. Try to be friends, see if you as people are matching, see if you're agreeable, see if you actually want to spend time with them, and don't get caught up in the rush to be with someone right now, or oh my parents need this or my religion requires that. If something's going to happen, it's going to happen. I think you should try and be as open as you can with different friend groups. I think that's a great way of meeting new people. Try to open your door as much as possible, get hobbies and just explore. I think with online dating it's hard because you know nothing. Even though we met on tinder, I think we worked because we knew of each other before. In conclusion, if you are looking for a relationship get yourself out of your box and be ready to communicate your feelings. At times a great relationship can look easy but I can tell you it’s not. A healthy relationship takes a lot of effort and even more time. Make sure you are ready for that commitment for the highs and lows. Loves not all pretty but it’s definitely worth it.

Brittany: I think just be prepared to be vulnerable. You have to feel pretty secure with yourself in some sense, to allow yourself to get to this vulnerable place that let's someone in. It was definitely an unexpected journey, but I was in a place where I was ready and I felt okay to break down my walls a little bit so that he could work through what he needed to. Timing really is everything. And also patience. It's not easy, but nothing good usually is. But if you really want something to work out, you will find a way to work together and that requires more patience than I gave it credit for. And lastly, don't compromise yourself. If you have to change to be with a person, in a way that isn't who you are fundamentally, it's not going to work. Down the line, there will be some resentment. You should feel safe with that person to be who you are and as you do grow, it should be on your terms. Love yourself first and foremost, and it's amazing what follows.