5 Harsh Truths to Create A Thriving Relationship Relationship Advice For Women By Mat Boggs

This will probably be unpopular, but I wanted to create it because I know it works. Most people want fulfilling connection. They want that lasting love story. But the truth is that most people don't actually talk about what it really takes to create a thriving relationship. I so wanted to know what were the truths about what creates lasting love that in my late 20s, I jumped in an RV with my best friend and we spent years traveling the country interviewing America's greatest marriages for their secrets for what makes love last. And I'm so glad that I did because they gave me a clear picture of the harsh truths as well as the beautiful benefits of what it takes to create and experience lifelong love. And now, after being married for 15 years, I wanted to consolidate some of these and today bring you the five harsh but powerful truths that can transform your love life for the better. These might be tough to hear, but I promise you once you see them, once you practice them, your relationship will never be the same again. So, let's dive in. The first harsh truth is that love alone is not enough. Love isn't going to get the job done. Falling in love is easy. It's staying in love that takes the work. Often what happens is that people stop doing the things they were doing in the beginning of the relationship at the end of relationship and that's why the relationship ends. Because here's the truth. Love, while it's the foundation, it doesn't actually become the structure for the relationship that keeps the relationship standing. A thriving relationship requires respect. It requires trust. It requires effort. It requires shared values. It required a shared vision, not just feelings. Feelings come and go. Feelings are like the tide. Feelings follow what you're focused on. If you're focused on how bad things are or how the person's not showing up, you're not feeling in love with that person. But love being a decision for how you're going to show up that day with respect, with trust, with effort, with energy, that then drives the feeling of love and keeps it burning. When you love someone deeply, but you don't respect their boundaries, the relationship will become toxic over time. A couple may be passionate about one another, but if they can't communicate or they're blaming each other or shutting down, the love alone isn't going to sustain them. I love John Gottman's work around this, showing that successful relationships, they're built on friendship, mutual admiration. In fact, he has an entire book called What Makes Love Last and it's on one topic. What makes love last? What do you think it is? It's trust. Amazing. Trust. Because what is trust? Trust is the effect of mutual respect, great communication, agreements, friendship. It's all of that creates this foundation of trust. Falling in love is easy, but staying in love, that's the thing that takes work. Love is like this spark that we have, right? But it's the commitment, it's the effort, that's what keeps the flame burning. The second harsh truth is that you're teaching people how to treat you by the treatment that you allow in your life. The treatment that you allow becomes the standard by which other people will treat you. In other words, you're co-creating the experience that you're having. If you're experiencing poor treatment, you're co-creating that. It's because you haven't made a decision from a place that eradicates that kind of treatment in your life. This is what I mean. If you let disrespect slide, the person is going to continue to disrespect you. Or if you overgive without boundaries or taking care of yourself, you're going to attract partners who take advantage of that. On the other hand, if you communicate your needs with confidence, then you're going to attract partners who honor them and who also communicate their needs. If your partner consistently cancels plans at the last minute and you never address it, they're going to learn that your time isn't as important, that you just don't care. And so, they're going to be way more lax about whether or not they're going to meet the time that they've agreed to. Or for example, if your friend repeatedly speaks to you in a way that feels hurtful or disrespectful and you never say anything, you never push back, you never hold the line, then they're going to simply assume it's acceptable. That's going to continue. People respond to the boundaries you set if you enforce those boundaries. Otherwise, they're going to assume that they can treat you with whatever behavior you're allowing them to treat you with. And ultimately, here's the great news. You could repattern any relationship that you want by making new agreements and holding to those agreements. Research also shows that people who have great self-value, great self-esteem, they're self-assertive, and they set their boundaries and hold true to those boundaries. They attract people who are kind, who are nice, who value them, and those are healthier relationships. And this brings us to the next harsh truth. And this one is that Hollywood has sold us a lie because nobody can complete you. Your partner will never complete you. Some outside person will never complete us. A healthy relationship is actually two whole people choosing to walk through life together. So, here's what this looks like. If your partner shouldn't complete you, they should be adding to the happiness that already exists. They should be amplifying the completeness that you already are, not be the source of the happiness. Happiest relationships come with two happy people actually who are secure in themselves come together first. If you enter into a relationship expecting your partner to fix your loneliness, like they become the thing that actually makes you non-lonely, or fix your low self-esteem, or fix your unhappiness, what we're doing is we're putting an impossible weight on them. The source of the low self-esteem, the source of the unhappiness isn't outside of us. It's inside us. It's where we're directing our focus. It's where is the meaning that we're making out of life. And here's the other thing, and one of the biggest lessons. Your partner's happiness is not your responsibility. That is a big one. One that took me years to get. And still, I still work on it because I want my partner to be happy. And I know that I can do things that can influence that happiness, but if she's unhappy, if she's going through something, if she's going through a phase where she's just really having a tough time, it's super important for me to disconnect my responsibility for her happiness because that's not my responsibility and it's not your responsibility for your partner's happiness. Our partner's fulfillment is their own job. That is a self job. So if you constantly feel responsible for cheering up your partner when they feel down, know this, that leads to emotional burnout. That will tear the relationship apart where one person expects the other person to make them whole. This is going to result in resentment because no one can meet that expectation fully in somebody else. We know with attachment theory that people who build self-worth in themselves outside of the relationships, those are the ones that create healthy, balanced connections. On the other hand, it's codependent relationships where the people rely entirely on each other for their happiness. Those lead to resentment, emotional burnout, and eventually breakups. The fourth harsh truth is that the attraction will fade unless you keep it alive. So attraction on itself, chemistry is going to fade unless you actually keep it alive. And we had so many couples talk about this. Love takes work. Relationships take work. When I was a kid in my 20s, I often thought it meant, well, it's going to be work to like work through a fight. It's going to be work to actually like get through the tough times. That's where the work is. No. What these couples were talking about is the work is on the front end to keep it alive, to keep the love interesting, to keep the chemistry. The work is prioritizing play together, prioritizing laughter, prioritizing shared experiences, prioritizing new date nights, doing the research to come up with new stuff. It's easy to go on a routine date with somebody new and have it feel exciting because they're new. But when you're with somebody for decades or years, how do you keep it fresh? You keep it fresh because you are actually creating a new experience. The work is in you being new, you growing, you reading, taking a class, growing yourself so that you actually have something new and interesting to talk about in the relationships. For example, if couples, all they do is become like business partners in life. All they're doing is they're talking logistics. They're talking about the kids, the bills, work, that kills the spark. Instead, couples who intentionally, they plan dates, they make it fun, they do weeknight walks together, weekend getaways where, hey, let's go stay in this hotel together, or let's go see this concert, let's go check out this new venue. Those are the ones that keep it more alive. Or flirting, calling each other out on how sexy each other are and doing whatever you'd like to do to flirt that feels good to each other, letting each other know how attracted you are to one another, revving each other up. All of that is work on the front end. It takes being intentional and not just getting into the routine rhythm of life. And the cool part is that the chemistry and the love doesn't fade if you keep nurturing it, if you keep it alive, if you keep that closeness and that connection. I still feel the sparks when I kiss my wife. It feels so good. Like the first time we kissed, I still feel it, but I wouldn't be feeling it if we were disconnected. I wouldn't be feeling it if our relationship was full of I'm feeling it because we keep the connection and the spark alive through new beautiful experiences. Now, let's talk about harsh truth number five. And this one is if you do not heal your past, you will repeat it. Your next relationship will not heal the pain from the last one. That's an inside job. Only you can do that. What this means is that the unhealed wounds that we have, they're going to lead to repeating toxic patterns in new relationships unless we heal it. So if we don't do the work on our self, if we don't heal the betrayal and learn to trust again, if we don't learn the communication patterns that created the downward draw of the relationship and create new healthy patterns, then we're going to attract partners who trigger these same wounds. The healthiest relationships, the healthiest love starts with self-awareness and actually doing the work, right? So for example, if you were in a past relationship where your trust was broken and you find yourself anxious and suspicious in a new relationship, even if your partner is trustworthy, you're going to create a toxic pattern there because you haven't healed from the past wound. If you grew up in a household where you're feeling unworthy of love, you may subconsciously choose partners who actually reinforce that belief, repeating that cycle of feeling unseen, unappreciated until you actually heal that place in you that knows you are fully worthy of love. What we know about attachment styles is that unresolved trauma leads to repeating unhealthy relationships, unhealthy dynamics. But what we also know is it does not matter how intense the wounds are or how long they've been there, that if you're willing to commit to doing the work, you can absolutely heal those parts of yourself, break free from those patterns and create what it is that you want. So some great questions to ask yourself to help illuminate what these patterns might be is what patterns have shown up in my past relationships or what wounds am I still carrying that might be affecting my love life? How can I heal this so I don't repeat the past? Healing isn't about waiting for the right partner, it's about becoming the right partner and then attracting the relationship you want. So as we look at these five harsh truths that love is not enough, it takes effort, it takes respect, it takes shared values. Number two, that you teach people how to treat you by the boundaries and standards you set. Number three is that nobody else is going to complete you, you are already whole. Number four, that attraction fades if you don't nurture it, you keep it burning, keep it alive. And number five is if you don't heal your past, you are going to repeat that past and that the growth starts with you. So know this, the best relationships, they're not perfect, but they're built on growth, they're built on respect, they're built on two people choosing each other every single day. So I hope these harsh truths serve you. My question for you is what are some of the harsh truths you've learned about love that help you actually create a more thriving relationship? I'd love to read those comments. Go ahead and share those in the comment section below. I appreciate you. Here's to your expansive, beautiful love life. Thanks for watching. I'll see you soon.