38 Hard Truths About Relationships

Our culture creates the expectation that life is supposed to be like a happy day at the beach, yet we all know that real life is far from a unilaterally joyful experience. Nowhere does our culture present a more skewed set of expectations than around intimate, long-term relationships. We expect sunshine and boxes of chocolates from romance, despite the fact that most of us witnessed difficulties in our parents' relationships during our younger years.

The truth is that relationships are not easy. They're never easy. Relationships require compromise. They require you to extend yourself for the sake of the other, and they require you to redefine the definition of love that our culture has handed to you.

Most dangerous, perhaps, is the fact that our culture tends to hammer home the "fact" that love is a feeling. But the reality is that love is action. It's work. It's something we must commit to as a practice.

When you are able to accept this, and get past the damaging expectation that you're supposed to feel a singular, blissful way all the time, you make room for the true joy of being in intimate partnership, a joy that widens itself to make room for the struggle.

Here are 38 hard truths about relationships that can help you create healthy expectations:

1. You won't always like your partner.

2. You won't always feel attracted to your partner.

3. You will feel irritated.

4. You won't always miss your partner when you're away from each other.

5. You will feel bored at times.

6. You will wonder if there's someone "better" at times.

7. You will feel lonely at times.

8. Your partner is not your clone, and differences can be challenging.

9. Your heart will open and close.

10. You will feel attracted and not attracted.

11. Your sex life will be challenging at times.

Especially if there's a high-drive partner and a low-drive partner (which there almost always is).

12. You won't always want to have sex.

13. You will feel in love and indifferent.

14. You will feel connected and disconnected.

15. Real love includes apparent polarities.

The more you make room for them instead of only seeking what we perceive as the "positive" experience, the more you will be able to cultivate the "positive" experience.

16. Real love includes fear.

17. Fear doesn't always feel like fear.

Sometimes it feels like indifference, irritation, ambivalence, and numbness.

18. The deeper the love, the deeper the fear.

19. The deeper the love, the deeper the risk.

This means touching down from time to time into an acute awareness of the possibility of loss.

20. You will have thoughts like, "I want to leave. I want something else. I want someone else."

These are just thoughts. They're normal. It doesn't mean they're true. Most often they're another manifestation of fear.

21. Doubtful thoughts (like those above) usually come on the heels of feeling disconnected from your partner.

Remember: Real love vacillates from connection to disconnection, sometimes in the course of a week, a day, or an hour. The more you know this, the more easily you can accept it.

22. You will wonder why nobody else talks about how hard it can be.

You will compare yourself to others, and your relationship to other relationships. (Be very wary of the picture-perfect depiction you see in social media, and all media for that matter. You never know what's happening behind closed doors.)

23. Conflict is inevitable.

24. You will see each other at your worst.

25. You will lash out at each other and say things you don't mean.

26. You will hurt each other.

This is inevitable, and accepting realities like this is simply part of the practice of being in a relationship.

27. You will break each other's trust.

This doesn't necessarily mean affairs — there are many ways to break trust.

28. You will bring your past into the relationship: childhood pain, pain from past relationships, pain from broken friendships.

So will your partner. And you will project this pain onto each other, each of you providing the mirror that reflects the unworked material from your inner world so that you can see it clearly and heal your life.

29. You will experience a dark night of the soul of a marriage when you don't know if you'll make it.

If you both hang on and commit to learning, you will grow to the next stage and your marriage will become stronger.

30. If you have kids, you will endure several years where neither of you are getting your needs met.

This feeling will ebb and flow. The dynamic in a relationship is never constant, so inevitably having children will challenge your routine.

31. There's no doubt that life with young children is challenging.

Hang on. They grow up and it gets easier.

32. You will feel enraged, indignant, and unappreciated at times.

The feelings will feel so big it's like they're going to swallow you whole and breathe flames of wrath onto your partner. Then you will learn to zip your lip as you watch these big feelings pass through you so that you can communicate from a clear and nonreactive place. This is a spiritual practice.

33. You will be invited to be the bigger person at times.

You will take the higher road, and every time you do this, it not only serves you but the relationship.

34. You will need to swallow pride and apologize first.

This is a good thing.

35. You will miss the honeymoon phase (if there ever was one).

And then you will realize that the solid, sustainable foundation that the two of you have grown together is so much better.

36. There may not be much of what you think of as romance in later years.

But you will learn to see that the daily ways that your partner shows up for you — like warming up your car in 10 degree weather and joining you for family gatherings instead of watching the game — are infinitely more romantic.

37. You will feel resentful.

You will harbor grudges. Then you will find ways to heal from past hurts and the relationship will grow stronger.

38. You will age together.

You will witness each other graying, wrinkling, sagging, and scarring. This can be a source of grief if you hang on to an old picture of your partner, or a source of joy as you hold and celebrate each other through the seasons of a life.

After reading this list you might wonder why anyone would sign on to a long-term relationship. Isn't it easier being single? Yes, it is easier. It's safer and less risky. But intimate relationships are one of the places where we're invited to grow our capacity to love and be loved, to widen our tolerance, to increase our patience, and soften into compassion.

It's a gift and a privilege to be in an intimate relationship, and when you can approach the relationship with realistic expectations, you're less likely to fight the storms and more likely to surrender to each rocky patch, knowing that its when you come up against your edge that you grow the most.