Dylan and I have been together for just a little over 12 years. We grew together through high school, college, leaving home, job changes, traveling, wedding planning, marriage, building businesses, and just about every major life event you could think of (aside from becoming parents). Through it all, we’ve built a strong, happy, and loving relationship that people often comment on. You’re so lucky. Not everyone can have a Dylan. Your relationship is just different. While I’m not trying to say what Dylan and I have isn’t special or that he isn’t incredible and unique (I mean… he’s pretty freaking amazing), it just seems that the compliments we get on our relationship are for the most basic qualities that every relationship should possess.

Before I really dive into this, I want to remind you that you’re worthy of having someone who loves and respects you. Stop settling for anything less. Stop telling yourself it’s normal. Stop with whatever excuses you’re telling yourself. I also want to point out that you have to give what you expect to receive, so you may have to do some work on your part, too. Be willing to learn and grow yourself before you expect anyone else to learn and grow for you.

RELATIONSHIP NON-NEGOTIABLES

TRUST

This seems so obvious but after talking to people in relationships it’s apparent that a major lack is trust. This may sound harsh but these are the facts and sometimes the facts hurt: if you’ve been burned in the past by someone else, you can’t take that to your new relationship, you gotta heal, and if you’ve been burned by the person that you’re with and you chose to forgive them and stay together, the trust has to be there. If the trust is gone and there is no work to be done to regain it, the relationship is dead.

What do I mean by trust? I mean not having the urge to go through their phone/messages while still having the freedom to unlock/use their phone if you need to. I mean being completely cool with them going out/away without you. I mean not being bothered if they’re talking to someone that may seem threatening (italicized because if you’re in a solid relationship, nobody is a threat). I mean not assuming they’re cheating on you if you can’t get ahold of them. I mean not needing to know their location 24/7. I mean not doubting them or believing someone else over them. I mean trust, the truest and purest form of it. If anyone tells you jealousy and distrust are healthy, please run far far away.

COMMUNICATION

Whew — this one. Do you know how many fights you can avoid if you learn to communicate and listen properly? Stop playing games, stop beating around the bush, stop going through other people, and communicate with your partner directly. If you don’t know how, learn. Be direct. Tell them how you feel, what’s bothering you, what you love, what you don’t love, etc. And, on the flip side, listen to how they feel, what’s bothering them, what they love, what they don’t love, etc.

Dylan and I had a HUGE communication breakthrough in premarital counseling (that we thought we didn’t need). It wasn’t that we weren’t good at communicating with each other or that we fought constantly, I mean we were getting married, we were pretty solid at this point. Premarital counseling taught us something so important, how to fight better. Typing that out makes me laugh every time because it sounds so ridiculous but hear me out, everyone has their own way they fight. Some people yell, some people shut down and avoid talking altogether, some people leave to cool off, some people do something else that I’m not even thinking of, and sometimes the way we fight fires the other person up even more than the actual issue at hand. I used to yell and want to talk about everything right then and there while Dylan was the leave to cool off and never bring it up again type of person. My yelling pissed him off even more and his leaving and avoidance pissed me off even more but neither of us knew that. Once we learned this, we stopped doing those things and just started having more heated debates than anything. After learning this about each other, I honestly can’t remember our last fight. Yes, we argue and have issues just like any other couple, but since we’ve been married there have been no blowouts, sleeping apart due to anger, or taking off to cool off. It’s been a game-changer.

The bottom-line? Get over your damn self and do it. There is no that’s just the way I am when it comes to communication and if your partner is telling you this, it’s a huge red flag. We ALL have the capability to learn, change, and grow.

FRIENDSHIP

Everyone says it, I can’t wait to marry my best friend, but if you take one look it’s easy to see who’s telling the truth and who has no idea what a best friend is. Dylan’s the one person I want to (and do) tell everything to, the person I want to hang out with more than anyone doing literally anything, he’s truly my best friend. We could spend every waking moment together. You’ll rarely find us out without each other because we genuinely want to hang out together. We have fun doing literally anything. I’m not saying you have to be inseparable, I am saying that you should want to hang out with each other in more than a romantic way. You gotta be able to hang out, alone, doing nothing, and love it at least once in a while.

RESPECT

Another seemingly obvious quality. The person you’re with should have respect for you in every sense of the word. Respect for who you are, your beliefs, your body, your feelings, etc. There are plenty of people in the world who will disrespect you in some way, shape, or form, one of them should never be your partner.

SUPPORT

This one can be tricky because people often confuse support with enabling. When I say support, I don’t mean support for every single decision — good or bad — that you make. You don’t want someone who’s going to support your continuation of substance abuse, eating disorder(s), unhealthy habits, etc. That’s an enabler.

You do want someone who’s a true partner and teammate. When you share your dreams, goals, and ambitions, they shouldn’t scoff at them or mock you for trying to follow through with them. This is where trust and respect also come into play. If you (or they) have a gut feeling about something and want to go for it they should support you even if they don’t understand it because they trust that you know what you’re doing and respect you. Will your gut feelings always be successful? No. Does this give them the right to be condescending towards you? No.

I would consider myself to be a pretty big dreamer. I set big goals and I have a lot of ambition. I kind of just GO for things and figure it out along the way. My life motto is literally to live a life unsettled for and when I worked at the bank I was quoted saying you were born to do more than pay bills and die (they put it in the paper next to my headshot…). Whereas Dylan’s always been more conservative and realistic (though he’s changed a lot over the last few years). Even though we have very different qualities when it comes to building a life, Dylan has always been my number one supporter in everything (even when he told me it would be impossible to travel and buy a house before we were 30, he never doubted me after I said I’d prove him wrong). Dylan’s the one who talks me out of quitting everything and getting a real job when my businesses are going through rough patches, he’s the first one to tell me to go for something even I have doubts about, he’s always there to defend my crazy decisions to the people in our lives, he’s always there to help me with big projects no matter what the requirements, he always picks up the slack when I’m in the thick of it, and he actually knows the ins and outs of what I do (the other day I asked him to grab me a ponytail out of the bathroom and he responded with I don’t see a ponytail in here but there is a scrunchie). This relationship is truly a team and partnership.

That about wraps it up here. I don’t care what anyone says — these 5 qualities are not rare, and if they are it’s because nobody has standards anymore, nobody’s willing to wait for the relationship they deserve, everyone is just out there settling for shit because somewhere, somehow, someone declared it as normal. It’s not normal. Stop settling and start working on yourself so that you can also be the partner someone else deserves, too.