As a very general rule of thumb, more honest, open communication - with oneself and with one's partner - could avoid a lot of pain and confusion in a lot of relationships. So communicate about your thoughts, communicate about your desires and dreams and worries, communicate about your communication. Don't let misunderstandings fester.
Plus, communication is just good practice. For one, you're always going to need it. For two... the better you get at communicating with yourself, the more clearly you will be able to think.
Self-strengthIf you haven't found someone to love you the way you need to be loved, you might as well be that person for yourself. Support yourself, talk to yourself (alone so others don't think you're crazy), anticipate your needs. You (as a subject) understand yourself (object) better than anyone else ever has or ever will; life is built that way. Do you trust yourself? Do you respect yourself? You-Yourself is one relationship that you absolutely need to put some time and energy into cultivating. It will benefit you for the rest of your life.
Conditional and unconditional loveMy girlfriend and I have talked a lot about how to love unconditionally. Obviously, the idea of unconditional love is desirable over a conditional, partial, unreliable love; but as it has been defined for me, unconditional love is too unchanging, too persistent to account for those times when continuing to be with and support another is simply unhealthy, and defies love for oneself. Yet I have been brought up hearing that unconditional, ever-persistent love is the wisest and healthiest and truest love.
Love is responsive. A loving stance creates different responses to different actions that also take into account your love for yourself. In the same way that loving nature can entail wearing shorts one day and a skisuit the next, a responsive, compassionate love does not put forward one static response to another's actions, because different actions on part of another show that that other is at different moments of growth and needs different kinds of input. Often the loving response requires that you sit another down and have a gentle, loving, but firm heart-to-heart; in extreme cases, the most loving thing to do might be to lovingly lock someone up or lovingly leave them alone to work out problems that only they can deal with. Loving choices can be very, very difficult ones - and with those, it's especially difficult to separate the love from the hurt, anger, and spite that we naturally feel when our trust is violated.
Love as an emotion can be felt and experienced unconditionally. But love as an expression is responsive, fluid, and demands ever-changing responses because our relationships are never static. So yes, love unconditionally; but love responsively - don't fall into what Ken Wilber calls "idiot compassion": the unwillingness to make hard choices in the name of love.
Be aware of what makes your relationship tickAsk yourself what it is that makes your relationship so beautiful. If your chemistry is largely based on each person's developmental moment, that chemistry will shift as each of you grows and the relationship might strain eventually. If it's based on stable personality traits, the bond won't change so drastically. Either way, by understanding the factors that contribute to make your relationship what it is, can help you consciously strengthen it and be aware of where it's going.
Change always happensLife is made of experiences and experiences are made of change. If your relationship is alive, you can count on it to constantly be shifting and evolving. There's no way to stop this and there's no way to freeze the positive moments except by taking pictures; but there are many ways to steer things so you always have more of those positive moments ahead of you.
Situational factors change, but you do too. Be prepared to recognize potential big changes when they come and talk about how to respond to them.
Pay attention to how you spend your timeRespect time - both your time and others'. The matter of where you dedicate your time essentially encodes the priorities that you care about the most. Your decisions about how to spend your time influence who you are and who you become. Respect that and love that. Don't look at time as a zero-sum resource to be meted out as needed; see time as a way to express your love, dedication, and passion about the things you cane about.
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