There’s more to true love than seeing someone you’re attracted to and eventually discovering that you want to spend the rest of your life with them. Relationships are more of a learning experience, where you get to know more about yourself, who you are, and what you want from the world around you.
If your needs and wants to coincide with the person that you’re with, then that makes for a great relationship. While there isn’t any romance 101 courses at your local university that you can enroll in to learn how to become the perfect partner, there are skills that you can learn to become a better version of yourself for your future spouse.
Some of these skills might build on your hobbies and turn into a career, others will just make you better to be around.
Self Sufficiency
A lover isn’t there to look after you, cook all your meals, and clean up after you. Although you and your partner will end up doing things for each other, you should also be capable of looking after yourself.
The first step to this is taking out a student loan, going to college, and learning a skill that you can build a career around. This will ensure that you can care for yourself from a financial perspective, hopefully doing something you love. Once you’ve got your job ironed out, you can think about other things that will make you more independent, such as learning how to cook, fix appliances, or tend your garden.
Empathy
Learning how to become a better chef can be complicated at times, but it’s nowhere near as difficult as learning the art of empathy. Arguments in a relationship can often reach a stalemate when neither partner is willing to accept and understand the other.
Learning how to listen to your loved ones and see things from their perspective could make it easier for you to maintain a healthier relationship.
Remember, showing empathy and understanding what your partner is talking about doesn’t necessarily mean admitting that you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes, in a relationship, your partner will just want to feel as though they’ve heard.
Patience
Finally, like empathy, patience is one of those skills that take a lot of time and practice to develop. If you’re not a very patient person, it can be difficult for you to survive in a relationship.
That’s because no matter how perfect you think your partner is, there will always be things about them that you wish would change. For instance, maybe your spouse drinks too much or has a bad habit of failing to clean up after themselves.
If you want to be happy in your relationships, then you need to be willing to accept your partner for their flaws and be patient with them when they’re trying to overcome these issues.
There’s a good chance that there are things that your partner doesn’t appreciate as much about you too, so try to be as understanding with them as they are with you.