When I was young, I never imagined that I would be married twice, let alone separated/divorced twice. I thought that with faith, I would choose the right partner and enjoy a happy marriage that lasted a lifetime. When my second marriage dissolved I began to wonder if I was a failure when it came to relationships, or if there was something wrong with me. However, after several years of study I now have a much greater understanding of how I function within myself, and what it takes to create successful relationships.
I have always tried my utmost to be a good partner and make my relationships work. When I was young I used to believe that you could make any relationship work if you tried hard enough. I don’t believe that anymore. I think you need some essential foundations in order for a relationship to grow and remain strong: foundations of mutual understanding, respect and commonality. I also believe that in order to have a fulfilling relationship you must first become your best partner so that you come to a partnership as a whole equal rather than seeking someone who will meet your needs and make you happy i.e. complete you. Since you are reading posts like this it is a strong indication that you are open to personal growth and wanting to create a deeply fulfilling relationship, therefore the right person for you is someone who will meet you in that.
Based on my experience and research these are what I think are the ten key questions for choosing the right partner. You can work through these if you are already in a relationship and want to know if it will be fulfilling for you. Alternatively, if you are single, you can use this as a checklist to help you assess whether a potential partner is likely to be a good match for you, and more importantly, you can use this as a checklist for yourself. Are YOU a good match? Are there characteristics identified on this list that you need to strengthen in yourself? It starts with you. You will attract people who meet where you are at. If you want to attract a high quality person, you need to believe you are a high quality person and be committed to evolving into your highest self.
1. Do You Love and Accept Yourself?
You are likely to attract and choose a partner who treats you as you subconsciously believe you deserve to be treated, and how you treat yourself. I believe that learning to love and accept ourselves is the central key to having successful relationships with others. It allows you to connect with another person as an emotionally self-sufficient equal rather than as someone who needs to connect with another person to have them meet your emotional needs.
Loving yourself means understanding that you are the source of your own happiness and fulfilment, not someone else.
If your own mental stories and beliefs leave you feeling afraid that being who you are and doing what you love, or taking time for yourself, will drive a partner away, then you need to change this belief first before getting into a relationship.
If you don’t love yourself, you won’t be able to feel deeply loved by anyone else. If you do not accept who you are, you will not be able to accept others for who they are and will likely criticise, blame and lash out at your partner.
Loving yourself is crucial to being able to create a fulfilling relationship, and necessary to help identify whether relationship issues are occurring due to how you are perceiving yourself, or how your partner is treating you (although as I said above, these two are often actually connected).
2. Are They Open to Learning and Growing as a Person?
Is your partner exploring personal growth for themselves? Are they open to growing with you? This is important for two reasons. Firstly, if they are not, then they will probably not be open to you learning and growing as a person and it will lead to frustration and resentment.
Secondly, no two people are completely alike, and it is also unlikely that you will meet someone who is all at once the answer to your every desire, and you would probably get bored with them after a while if they were. Fulfilling relationships are a continually unfolding, co-creative dance where the partners take turns to lead and respond, to create a more beautiful experience than they could create by themselves. Is your partner open to discussing new ideas and trying new things? If not, then it could feel like they are standing still on the dance floor while you dance around them, and that will be uncomfortable for you both.
3. Do You Feel Comfortable Being Your True Self Around Them?
Is there anything you feel like you need to hide or change when you are with your partner, or anything they don’t accept about you? No two people are ever perfectly compatible. There will be little things about each other that you each find annoying, but do you feel like there is anything essential or important to you that they don’t like or accept? Also, does your partner feel comfortable being their true self around you? Is there anything you feel you want to change about them?
In a true relationship with a well-matched partner you will feel like your partner really ‘gets you’, and that you are free to be yourself and say exactly what’s on your mind.
4. Do They Support Your Strongest Passions, Values and Beliefs?
Does your partner support your strongest passions, values and beliefs? Do you support theirs? This is very important. Your passions, values and beliefs are core aspects of your identity. If someone does not accept or support these then you will not feel fully accepted and supported by them in general. It will always be a point of dissatisfaction and frustration. This does not necessarily mean that they have to share those passions, values and beliefs, but they need to speak positively about them, and support you to pursue and express them.
If you plan to have children together, and you have differing values and beliefs then there will need to be acceptance and clarity about how those will be expressed in the raising of the children.
Disagreement about passions, values and beliefs is a common and often significant source of conflict in relationships. To avoid this, you need to either have largely common passions, values and beliefs, or be able to create a relationship where difference is accepted and valued rather than seen as right or wrong.
5. Do You Have Shared Interests?
Do you and your partner have several shared interests? I think the old saying ‘couples that play together, stay together’ is very true. This follows on from question three. If you feel like you are giving up a lot of what you love doing to be with someone, or doing things with them because they enjoy it, but you don’t, then in the initial bloom of excited love this may seem okay, but long term it will lead to dissatisfaction, frustration and probably disconnection.
This does not mean that you need to have everything in common. Having some separate interests that you pursue on your own or with friends can be a healthy thing as long as there is a balance between time spent on joint activities with your partner, and time spent doing things separately.
6. Do They Treat Other People Respectfully?
How your partner treats other people is a truer indication of their routine patterns of behaviour than how they treat you. You may think that they will treat you differently because they love you, but that will not last. At the beginning of a relationship we are very conscious of going above and beyond to please and impress the other person, but in time we will revert to treating our partner the same way we treat people in general. How your partner treats others is how they will ultimately treat you.
Does your partner help friends and family? Do they speak respectfully to people in service roles like waiters and shop assistants? Do they have close, positive friendships? Do they frequently speak critically about other people? Consider these things a red flag that you are unlikely to be able to create a fulfilling relationship with this person.
If your partner keeps you from spending time with your friends, or avoids being with you in wider social settings, or is reluctant to introduce you to their family and friends, then these are also signs that there are issues to be concerned about.
7. Do You Both Fight Well?
In any relationship you will have misunderstandings and disagreements which makes learning to manage conflict effectively crucial to a successful relationship.
Something to be aware of is how your partner speaks about past relationships and partners. Do they put all the blame on the other person, or do they focus on what they learned about themselves from the experience?
If you consistently feel like somehow you are always in the wrong, or are afraid to raise issues with your partner out of fear that they will respond aggressively, or don’t feel safe to discuss certain things with your partner, or find yourself frequently preparing yourself mentally to deal with hypothetical attacks from your partner, then these are big red flags that this is not a healthy relationship for you. If you are experiencing this then it is likely that your partner has some significant issues in terms of how they relate to others, and also that you would benefit from learning to more confidently create and hold self-honoring boundaries for yourself.
8. Do You Feel Safe Around Them?
Obviously you need to feel physically safe around your partner, but also emotionally safe. Danger signs to watch for are if you feel frequently drained, anxious, on edge or like ‘the rules keep changing’ in the relationship.
You can also feel unsafe if it feels like you have to do all the work to make the relationship happen i.e. if you are doing all the giving and getting little response. There could be two things going on here. One, your partner is not wanting the same thing out of the relationship as you, or is not feeling a strong connection to you. If this is the case, hard as it may be to let go, you have to accept that the other person is unlikely to change no matter how hard you try, and therefore you will probably never feel fulfilled in this relationship. The second reason this may be happening is because you are over-giving. It is usually woman who over-give. Giving is actually a masculine energy. In a male/female partnership when a woman over-gives to a man, the man tends to shut down or shut off. Feminine energy is receptive. Be the queen and let your king come to you. Allow him space to be the leader and giver.
In a true relationship with an equal partner you will feel in tune, relaxed and light. You will feel energised by being with them, even by working though conflict with them.
9. Are They Committed to Creating a Fulfilling Relationship?
Is your partner committed not just to you, but also to building a successful relationship? Is the relationship important to them?
Satisfying relationships need to be created through ongoing focus and effort. Both partners need to give consistent attention to the relationship to maintain high energy within it.
10. Do You Feel Uplifted by Them?
Do you feel like you are your best and highest self when you are with this person? Do you feel like they encourage you to be your best and highest self?
Do they lift you up or bring you down?
Sometimes, it can be hard to pinpoint when a subtle behavior is undermining to you. Listen to your intuitive ‘gut feelings’, and trust that if something is true for you it feels light and if something is not true for you then it feels heavy. Everything may look good on the surface, but if you feel heavy and drained in the relationship then something about it is not aligning with your highest self.
These questions can be summarized into 3 core questions:
Do you feel light and energized or heavy and drained in the relationship?
Do you feel emotionally safe and secure in the relationship?
Does this relationship support you to be your highest, most expanded self?
These questions are based on my learned experience and research only, so don’t take them as professional advice. I do think they are important aspects to consider though. I am also not claiming that if you can answer “yes” to all these questions then you are guaranteed that this is your perfect match and you’ll have a lifetime of love and happiness together. What I’m saying is that if you have one or more of these things missing, then I think that you are likely to run into serious problems in your relationship long term.
What also comes through from this list is that creating a fulfilling relationship is as much about being a good partner as finding a good partner. It starts with you. You must become the type of person you want to attract.
If you want to read more about How to Attract a Great Partner and Create the Fulfilling Relationship You Desire then you can download my free ebook from the Resources page.
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