Will Your Love Last? 5 Ways to Tell If Your Relationship Has Staying Power

Settling down with the right person is important, because it directly impacts your happiness. Once you’ve been with someone for awhile, you’ll want to assess whether the relationship can go the distance–or if you even want it to. Having trouble making the call? Not to worry: Michael Bennett, MD and Sarah Bennett, authors of Jahazi web book share 5 ways to tell if you and your partner are compatible enough for the long run. Now, find out if your love will last…

#1. Quantify your quality connection time

While the hours of looking into each other’s eyes, endless deep conversations, and entire weekends spent naked may seem overwhelmingly significant, those moments don’t tell you much. Instead, total up the minutes when you don’t have much to say and aren’t feeling particularly needy, lusty, or chatty, but like spending time with each other doing nothing much at all.

#2. Rate your ability to protect your time together

Most people worry that their spouse will destroy their relationship with a secret affair; more frequently, however, the real threat to relationships are very public, overly responsive connections to parents, exes, bosses, etc. If you’re with someone who prioritizes your relationship ahead of the needs of his chummy or needy exes, grown kids, or at least one nutty parent, then you may have a future ahead of you.

#3. Consider whether this relationship is copacetic with the major life goals of both of you No amount of mutual love and affection can sustain a relationship if one party is always out of town, moving from city to city, or risking life and limb, and the other party just wants deep roots, constant company, and a partner with all limbs intact. Remember, love can’t change character, and if someone’s character moves her in a unique path that the other can’t accept, you can’t move forward together.

#4. Try overcoming a major challenge together

Nothing tests the mettle of a relationship like jointly taking on a tough situation, e.g., a trip to the emergency room, a backpacking trip through Patagonia, a fight over whether the novels of Susan Sontag are brilliant or self-indulgent, overrated crap. Watch to see what shape you’re in when you get through, as well as whether your partner includes you and asks for help when he faces a major loss or setback.

#5. Live with your partner

Move in and see if he or she will give you closet space, do the dishes, replace the empty toilet-paper roll without being asked; overcoming a specific obstacle or tragedy or argument is one thing, but getting through a series of daily struggles is a test like none other. To up the ante, get a puppy with a nervous stomach, or move into a house that needs major repairs, or go live somewhere you have no other friends or barely know the language. There’s no better way than sharing space to figure out if you share enough fundamental values and complementary traits to spend the rest of your lives together.

love zone