The Importance of Individual Growth in a Long-Term Relationship

I have been with my husband for around 14 years, it has been a long journey with a lot of growing up together (I guess that’s what happens when you meet in highschool). But one of the biggest lessons that have allowed us to build a strong foundation to go on to have a healthy marriage and 2 children, is we continue to grow and strive to be better as individuals, which allows us to come together as a team. And marriage is a team sport.

At 16, you hardly know who you are and most relationships are far from a healthy adult style relationship. And we were no different. At 18 we we’re navigating post-secondary while I was also navigating some significant mental health challenges which led to a lot of toxicity on both ends. But as they say, when you know you know. He was and is the love of my lifetime. So we kept growing and pushing to be better and do better. At 25 we started to settle down and ease into a flow and rythmn of communication, needs, and expectations for our future. At 26 we were married, at 27 we had our first child, at 29 we had our second child, and now 30 we are navigating the hard years of having 2 kids under 3.

This journey is far from easy, but we have decided collectively we want to make this work, we prioritize each other over many other things, and our decisions are mostly a collective decision. We are honest with our communication, our disappointments, our flaws, and our hopes. And it talks WORK and PRACTICE, it is not easy even after 14 years working on it. I go to therapy monthly and see a psychiatrist to manage my bipolar & anxiety and he has done a lot of work in ways to better support me on the bad mental health days. I have worked on understanding his love language as it is vastly different from mine. We have talked about ways that make us feel loved, and when needed, reminded each other of that - because as much as you may wish, you’re partner can’t read your mind and it’s not their responsibility to do so.

So if you want that movie-style love, you have to put in the work to get there. You have to desire to be a better you, so you can show up as a better partner. And your partner should want the same. Allowing the errors of being human, but ultimately being able to take responsibility for your actions and mistakes - and committing to doing better for your team.