Have you asked yourself how can I prepare for love? Or better yet,

What should I know about falling in love?

Author: Cody Moreau

Good things come with time; hard work pays off; you can’t rush success. In our society, there has been a growing interest in the entrepreneurial lifestyle in recent years, a trend that continues to expand. We are inundated with expressions advocating the slow-grow, the gradual building of a career through years of persistence and perseverance, where consistency pays big-time.

Too often, we don’t transfer this quite healthy mentality on success in our careers to our love life. Though their popularity is starting to see a decline, the recent trends of Internet-based and mobile speed dating are evidence of this. Websites and applications which offer little more to their consumers than a profile picture and an option to swipe gave rise to a “hooking up” trend in the dating world.

It can be emotionally destructive, demeaning, and hurtful when these encounters are based on such superficial standards. Chances are, you’re not going to find Prince Charming on Tinder or Cinderella on Bumble. As in your career life, hard work, dedication, and selectivity are required to make a relationship fulfilling and long-lasting. Equally important is having the right expectations of what a relationship should be, and what goes into keeping it healthy. The good majority of it is learned through experience, but why blindfold yourself? Here are the different stages to expect out of a secure, mature, passionate relationship, and the things you absolutely need to keep in mind about falling in love.

1) Adventure

This is the time in which couples start to learn about each other as individuals; what they believe in, what they hope for, what they like to do, and this is what makes the beginning such a wonderful stage of the relationship. It’s an adventure, each experience between the two of you feeling fresh and new. Even if it’s a restaurant you’ve eaten in a hundred times, even if it’s the same beach you walk on every day, it’s all invigorating, like enjoying your favorite food for the first time over and over again.

This is the time to simply have fun. Go out and experience as much as you can together, learn from and about one another. Find out if you enjoy the same things, like sailing or stamp collections. Expose one another early on to what makes you happy, because the ability to have fun together is irreplaceable. This builds the foundation of your relationship; connecting over mutual interests, and sharing in the things you both love.

2) Growing Pains

That sense of adventure between the two of you, regardless of what stereotypes about long-term relationships you’ve heard, is something that can be maintained and carried through the entirety of a relationship–this is what makes them so enriching and rewarding.

Conversely, something that separates too many couples too early in a relationship is allowing minor differences and conflicts to cloud that lens of affection that painted every date, every moment with their new partners. Now, this isn’t to say major differences should be carelessly pushed to the wayside and ignored in the face of a good time (wanting to raise a families under different religions, for example, may be something that deserves a conversation or three), but how they organize the pantry shouldn’t totally kill your buzz.

Disagreements are normal, healthy even, and most of the time there are ways to work through them with positive results. Learn to love the quirks, and don’t let them ruin a potentially really great thing.

3) Integration

Whatever that means to you–whether it’s a spare toothbrush, a drawer for the other person at your place, or moving in together, it’s the next phase of the relationship. It happens organically. You eventually become part of each other’s world; you bring one another up in conversations at work, you’re reminded of inside jokes the two of you have throughout the day.

This is where the best aspects of a relationship come to fruition. You’re becoming true partners, each vested and involved in the other’s life. Someone is there for you when needed, and you enjoy being there for them. You’ve built a foundation together, and are beginning to support each other on a more personal level. It’s easy in this stage to experience some frustrations, fear of either screwing up the relationship–or fear of what the relationship could mean. Luckily, there are scientific reasons we get the jitters at this stage, and steps you can take to identify real issues from ones we create in our minds. Remember: you’re just getting to the good stuff.

4) Cooperative Growth

Television shows, radio stations, movies, Uncle Mark who’s been single for three decades, the news, family, social media, you’ll generally find the same advice on relationships anywhere you go. At face value, the advice is sound–we’re instructed to “make time for each other,” that “communication is everything,” and “love is a sacrifice.” While those things are all true in many ways (albeit somewhat vague, directionless and so overused it liberates the advisor from the blowback of bad advice), there is something even more crucial to making it work with your little lover girl/boy: a genuine devotion to the betterment of your relationship.

If both parties are working toward this goal–the mission of empowering one another–momentum is created. The best and worst parts of a person blossom when they’re pushed out of their comfort zone into growth. By holding each other accountable for your actions, by always being honest about how you feel, through wanting the best for your partner, one of the greatest parts of a long-term relationship becomes apparent. With true compatibility, and the right way of thinking (along with a little help from the experts), you become a better individual.

Accept that your partner has faults; we all do. Everyone still remembers that embarrassing thing you did at the family barbeque, and that’s alright. We make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve a certain level of forgiveness. Forgive as you’d want to be forgiven, and you’ll find a level of fulfillment, happiness, and passion you never thought was possible with another person.

5) Adventure

It’s not a coincidence that a relationship starts and stays healthy in the same way. Another wonderful thing about a healthy relationship is that it ages like wine. Through the laughter, the growing pains, the learning, and excitement, you start to take on the world as a team. You’ve now learned not only how to light a spark, but keep the embers burning. When one of you falls, the other is there to offer a hand (or a well-placed jab in the ribs) to get you back on your feet. You know each other well, and could probably order them take-out without even asking what they want, and at least get it mostly right.

Yet, for some reason, this isn’t boring; it isn’t monotonous, as jaded naysayers may purport as the inevitable conclusion to any long-term relationship. You learn to love how well you know each other, and because of your mutual commitment to growth, you know there’s always more to learn. You’ve learned to amplify the joys in life with the love you have for your partner, and all the happiness they bring you. That sense of adventure everyone said you lose when things get comfortable never went away, because you never got comfortable. You strived for growth, and you grew; you pushed each other to be better, and you got better; a successful couple’s history is one of support, devotion, and an almost childlike importance on the fun. Now you venture the world together, and forge a path unique to your relationship; together, you create a blissful existence. Though not without its trials, the payoff is immense.

When a company doesn’t put much effort into its interview and hiring policies, there tends to be a high turnover rate; applicants are brought in and drop out almost constantly, and no talent is ever acquired and fostered. This holds the company back from any real growth and can be detrimental in the early stages of the business. The same theory applies to your love life; know what you want out of another person, yet always be reasonable about your expectations.

Life can be lived two ways: you can coast with minimal effort, your successes and failures adding up to something in the middle, never uncomfortable, but never improving. Or, you can take charge, and make your life what you want it to be. Again, this same stratagem should be applied directly to your relationships. It’s far from true that all the splendor of the world can only be seen through a looking glass made out of your love for another person, but that’s not the point. It’s a big, wide world out there, and sometimes, their hand in yours is all you need, to give you the courage it takes to bring everything in your world–and theirs–to a new level of success and enduring joy. The higher you climb, the more magnificent the view.

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