A strong long-term relationship can be built when each partner sees it equally valuable. This means each partner recognizes the importance of taking care of the relationship itself. A relationship is the system in which two individuals become closer, and as a result grow individually, and together. For a relationship to thrive, it needs to be nurtured and monitored as much as each person.

In focusing on the relationship, it becomes about “us” and less about me. This doesn’t mean you lose yourself and your identity. It means the combined unit of being together takes precedence over oneself. In putting the relationship first, each partner lets go of the desire to be right, or in control. It means listening to your partner and truly understanding their needs and perspective.

By putting the relationship at the center, it allows each of you to support the other. This builds and strengthens the relationship because both of you give it the focus it needs to be positive and supportive to each of you.

Letting Go of Me for We

Once the “me” can be put aside for “we”, then you can become a team. All teams have one thing in common – the same goal. The common goal of your team of two is nurturing the relationship, and how you each care for one another within it. This means helping each other and helping the team to grow, to learn and to get stronger. Like any team, this improves and gets easier over time and with practice. The practice of being a team includes being present and supportive, and offering guidance, if needed and wanted. Sometimes, each of you will need to “take one for the team” which may be compromising on something and not getting your way. If each of you take one for the team occasionally, you’ll see there is a back and forth, where you’re helping each other and you each know you can rely on the other to be there.

Other characteristics of a team are collaboration and cooperation which counters competition. While being on the same team with the same goal, you listen to your partner and support their goals and wants without it being about who is better or who does something before the other.

To build and foster a strong relationship that supports each of you requires real time conversations. If you’re not agreeing, or if one person is not supportive or present, don’t wait to see what happens, deal with it in the moment. If you put it off, neither of you will fully remember what happened, or how you were feeling at that time, to completely look at the situation and identify how to change it. Responding to a situation when it happens fosters good communication habits and will likely lessen disagreement, or one person not being fully present. This habit creates relationship norms that define expectations in how to respond, be present and support each other and the relationship.