The traits that make you a good partner

Want to be the best partner you can be? These are the traits you should focus on cultivating.

by: E.B. Johnson

Relationships can form a piece of our happiness here on the planet. The wrong relationship, though, can create a level of misery that completely alienates us from ourselves. If we want to have happier, healthier relationships, we have to rethink the way we build our connections with others from the ground up. Do you actually know what it takes to be a good partner? Or are you settling for habits and patterns that are going to leave you resentful and broken-hearted?

Good relationships need good partners.

Good relationships don’t happen, my magic or comic ordainment, despite what we may think. They happen by forming bonds with happy, healthy, well-adjusted people, after we ourselves have found the power and the self-respect to become the fully rounded people who are strong enough to stand on our own two feet. To get a good relationship, we have to be a good partner, but that requires first knowing what a good partner looks like.

How much time have you spent improving yourself, versus improving the quality of person you look for? It’s hard to find someone on the ideal path when we’ve got ourselves stuck at the bottom of the mountain. In order to navigate the complex nuances of intimate relationships, we have to improve ourselves from the inside out.

Find the power to be vulnerable, respectful, and honest with yourself (about yourself) and you’ll be able to find someone who does the same. In order to enhance the way we connect with others, we have to enhance the way we see ourselves. Believe in what you want from a partnership and increase your self-esteem. Stop looking for someone to rescue you from life and look instead for someone to accompany you through it. Shift the way you prioritize partnerships and value them for what they really are.

The traits that make you a good partner.

Do you know what it takes to be a good partner? Until you can recognize these traits in yourself, it will be hard to see or find them in anyone else. If you truly want to build something that lasts, you need to know how to open up, you need to be mature, and you need to show great respect, empathy, and an alignment of hopes and goals.

Being vulnerable

Being vulnerable is a key part of being a good partner. When we are confident in who we are, we are able to open up and show other people who we are too. This increases their confidence in us and helps us to bond on deeper levels by encouraging them to open up and trust us in turn.

Natural maturity

There is natural maturity that’s required to be a good partner and build a stable relationship. You need to know where you’re going in life and you need to be balanced both inside and out. When we’re prepared to confront life (and ourselves) we become better equipped to face the hardships with someone else.

Sense of respect

Respect is an absolute necessity when it comes to building any good relationship. You can’t be a good partner unless you both respect yourself and respect your partner. Your partner has to be able to allow you to be who you are, and they need to respect what you want from your life and your career. Likewise, you should nurture their sense of independence and the life they want for themselves.

Great empathy

Just as respect is a cornerstone of any solid relationship, so too is empathy. When we empathize with someone, we are able to connect with them by feeling their emotions simultaneously. This mutual understanding makes our connection deeper and also encourages the other person to trust and open up to us.

Integrity and values

Happy couples have a lot of things in common, but one of the primary similarities they must share is an aligned sense of integrity and values. When we align these things, we are able to better frame our goals and our shared vision for the future too. Superficial similarities will only get you so far. True alignment is required at the core of who we are.

Sense of humor

The best partners are those with a sense of humor that’s able to float us through the hard times. Although being able to crack a joke doesn’t seem like something that’s a must-have, it’s a powerful tool to have when life challenges us or throws hurdles into our path. If you actually want to be a better partner, then it’s helpful to find the lighter side of life.

Living affection

Physical and emotional affection are crucial in keeping the spark alive in our relationships. This affection helps us to increase intimacy across all planes. It also helps us to express our desire for one another and establish trust and interest. Beyond that, affection can help us to express our appreciation for one another and make it easier to open up or be vulnerable.

How to cultivate these traits in your own life.

We become better partners through learning, and part of that learning requires learning to cultivate the above traits in our own lives. It’s not enough to simply wait for someone good to show up. We attract good partners by becoming good partners ourselves. Invest in becoming more well-rounded person, and you’ll bring more of the same into your life.

1. Be confident in you

How confident are you in who you are and what you want? Strong people bring other strong people into their lives, and the backbone of this strength comes from self-esteem. You have to recognize and embrace your inherent right to thrive in order to attract someone who values the same for you.

Re-build your self-esteem from the ground up. Start by slowly looking backward toward all the experiences that taught you that you weren’t enough. Reshape them in a more positive light, and through that rebuild that narrative you tell about yourself.

No matter what happened in your past, you are still enough and still deserving. You deserve to be happy and you deserve to become a better person with a better life. Know that you have a right to take up space in this world, and you have a right to what you want from life and from love. Look in the mirror each day and remind yourself what you do well and what you love about your body.

2. Figure out what matters

There’s no way to land a partner who has everything you want when you’ve never taken the time to figure out what those things are. At some point, you have to stop chasing the happiness of other people and get real about what means the most to you. Ready for better relationships? Figure out what you want from the partners you bring into your life.

Before you jump headfirst into something serious, you need to spend time on your own getting clear on what your individuality means. Who are you at your core? What brings you the most joy in this life? What experiences are you best surrounded by? What people bring you light?

Take time to journal, meditate, talk things out with trusted friends and loved ones. Get back into your passions and the things which inspire you, interest you, or intrigue you. Find your path in life and then imagine the type of person who can complement that future plan with plans of their own. When you figure out what matters, you’ll be able to plot a course of action and get it.

3. Educate yourself

Believe it or not, one of the quickest ways to become a better partner is to educate yourself on relationships. We’re not living in the dark ages anymore. We know more than ever about the ways in which we connect with others, and how we maintain and stabilize those connections over time. Want to be a better partner? Stop shooting in the dark and increase your understanding.

There are endless resources out there when it comes to improving our knowledge of relationships. Learn how your past pains and hangups impact the way you relate to others. Look for patterns and habits that are creating toxic ideas about love and relation.

If you don’t know where to begin reaching out to a relationship expert can be a great place to begin. These trained professionals can help us to identify shortfalls when it comes to the way we relate to love. They can also point us in the right direction when it comes to figuring out what we really want. Relationship counselors provide a trained eye which helps us thrive.

4. Save yourself

So many people wind up in disappointing relationships because they look for a savior, rather than a partner. Romance isn’t a life raft. Your partner can’t save you from your life, and they’re not supposed to either. You alone have the power to build the life (and the partnership) that carries you closer to your joy. Until you save yourself, the right person can’t come in.

Become your own savior and stop looking for someone to carry the weight and the pain of your life. You need to resolve the pain of your past so you can clear your vision and build a relationship that’s based in reality. No one else is responsible for healing your wounds.

If you’re struggling with mental health issues, address them and confront them once and for all. Don’t look for an intimate partner and expect their affection to heal that hole in your soul. Likewise, forcing a new relationship won’t heal old wounds with family, friends, or former lovers. Find better ways to make yourself whole, and you’ll attract whole people into your life.

5. Reshape your priorities

Are you someone who has put relationships above everything else in the past? Do you see love and romance as your top priority? While relationships can certainly provide us with aspects of happiness, they alone aren’t enough to create the kind of happiness that lasts a lifetime. If we truly wish to thrive, we have to reshape our priorities and put romance in its rightful place.

Put romance in perspective in your life. It is not the be-all and end-all to joy. True happiness can only be found from within, when we are content with who we are as an individual and the environment we’ve built for ourselves. Happy relationships come when we’ve already figured out how to be happy people on our own.

Stop obsessing over something you can live without. Whether you find the right person right now or in 10 years, you can still be happy, whole, and filled with excitement. See romantic relationships a piece of your happiness rather than the centerpiece of it, and you’ll be so much happier in who you are and the quality of partners you attract.

Putting it all together…

In order to build relationships that are worthwhile, we have to first recognize what a good partner looks like. Not every person is worth sharing our lives with. Only someone who is kind, compassionate, respectful, and aligned with our values should get the privilege of taking up space in our lives. Want a relationship that can stand the test of time? Become the type of partner you want to attract into your world.

You need to believe in yourself and what you want before you’ll ever be able to find someone who can value you for what you’re worth. Build your self-esteem and use this as the jumping off place in figuring out what you want from a partner and a long-term partnership. Educate yourself and learn everything you can about honest connection, communication, and mutual understanding so that you can come to the table prepared to work as a team. Instead of looking for someone to “rescue” you from life, be your own savior and create a future that someone can enjoy being a part of. Above all else, though, make sure you prioritize your relationship appropriately and don’t put the happiness of someone else above your own.