Let’s highlight three key principles that can make a partnership between a man and a woman strong, lasting, and stable. What should we pay attention to first?
It’s very important that we touch on what destroys relationships. When we articulate the foundation of breakdown, it becomes clear what needs to be done to ensure the relationship is harmonious and happy. This helps us understand what creates a strong base. When life brings problems or various situations, the relationship only grows stronger, and the partners help each other through it instead of making things worse.
There’s a common belief that the strength of a relationship is tested not in good times, but precisely during difficulties. The most important element of any relationship is the ability to empower one another. We often see a good relationship as something that brings us comfort, to make us feel good.
A good relationship should be viewed from the perspective of mutual growth — for me and for my wife. If my wife is growing, it’s much more likely she’ll bring something to the relationship that supports my development and brings happiness.
There’s a great video with Karl Lagerfeld where he says he doesn’t understand men who believe that women don’t need money and consider women who ask for it “bad.” He points out that these same men want their women to look beautiful, be well-groomed, well-dressed, and stylish in public — yet still claim women shouldn’t care about money.
The most important point is this: if your partner is happy, then there’s a much greater chance that you’ll be happy too. When one partner feels joy, it creates a foundation for growth for both people. So if you want to be happy, it’s very important to also strive for the happiness of the other person. This is one of the strongest life rules that opens the path to growth. What does happiness mean to the other person? First of all, it’s your desire to understand and figure out what happiness is for your partner.
This is so important! Ask the other person — that’s number one. The second idea is that any expectations you build toward the other person are illusions and manipulations, and they will always lead to problems. You simply have to understand that.
Of course, it’s very helpful if you can discuss this with your partner. It’s equally important to understand that your partner has expectations too. In today’s world, people are so self-centered and stuck in a sense of ownership that they don’t want to admit that the other person might also have expectations.
If you want a real relationship, then cheating cannot exist. Not under any circumstances. None whatsoever — not even with yourself. It’s simply not possible.
Placing expectations — like striving for some ideal — limits the scale of the relationship. Any ideal or desire to see your partner as perfect narrows the relationship and restricts it, because the perfection of an ideal is always a kind of boundary. You don’t see the full picture, you don’t perceive the full range of possibilities. It’s the same with expectations. When you place expectations, you drastically limit the possibilities that could arise. These expectations align with the idea of the ideal and its limitations.
Let’s talk about a real issue. A man tells a woman, “I married a different person 20 years ago.” Or a woman tells her husband, “I married a different person.” That locks the relationship in the past and limits the possibilities of what the relationship could become. If a couple wants their relationship to stay the same as it was in the beginning, that’s the start of its decline.
Remember: if you say that your partner has changed and you don’t like it, then you are the person blocking the growth of the relationship. This isn’t about destructive changes, like if your partner starts living in a harmful way. But if you’re against any change at all, that means you don’t want the relationship to evolve.
One of the main features of healthy relationships is that they should grow.
Growth in a relationship doesn’t mean both people have to read self-help books or meditate together. It simply means that you understand that relationships change. Just change. That’s the nature of life — we constantly change. There is no fixed constant. Life keeps moving. Sure, there are temporary constants, things you can immerse in spiritually or perceptually, but that’s another conversation.
At the core, people change constantly, and of course relationships should change too. They should grow. The question is: are they growing in a positive direction, or are they deteriorating? Because growth can also mean decline. But the relationship should evolve and shift. We should aim for growth in a positive sense. The desire to change — this is something modern society often sees as an illusion. We’re told all the time that we need to grow, learn, and evolve. But when a problem arises, someone will say: “You changed, and now everything is bad.” So which is it — are we supposed to change or not? Are we supposed to evolve or not?
The fundamental issue is how people grow: are they truly evolving together, or are they degrading?
Someone might say their relationship is evolving because they go to certain types of parties or experiment with things like drugs to improve sex. In reality, they’re talking about degradation. The same applies to people who say their relationship is growing because they travel and try something extreme, like ayahuasca. These people actually want their relationship to fall apart. At least in the short term it may seem like growth, but if you are personally degrading, your relationship will degrade in the long term too.
So many problems in relationships come from one person doing something “for the other” just to avoid losing the relationship. That person ends up degrading, and though it seems like the relationship is improving, the second partner eventually degrades too.
Let’s say for a year you drink alcohol. Or you tolerate behavior from your partner — like he comes home and doesn’t even say hello, saying, “I’m tired, I make the money, you should do what I say.” The woman might think, “I don’t want to lose him — maybe things will change.” In that moment, you’re supporting the relationship, but you’re also letting yourself degrade, giving your partner the space to degrade too.
At first glance, it might look like the relationship is growing. There may not be any obvious problems right now. But in the future, there will always be a collapse in these dynamics — and that’s important to remember.