“Great relationships feel good to come home to and leave you feeling good about yourself. Don’t settle.” ~Lisa Merlo-Booth
Healthy relationships feel great to come home to and leave you feeling great in them. When life gets hard, great relationships feel like a salve to your wounds. During these times, you want to rest your head on your partner’s shoulder and trust that you can count on them to help you through. And in the best of times, there’s no one you’d rather share the joy with than your partner.
Too many couples settle for less than great in their relationships. Settling, though, makes the difficult times harder and the great times a little duller. What you think is something you can live with becomes a constant heavy weight impacting far more than you ever imagined. Life’s too short to be okay with something consistently dimming the light in your life.
If you’ve found yourself settling in your relationship, choose to turn things around. Have frank conversations. Ask for what you want with clarity, and stand behind that vision with conviction. Act as though your relationship is exactly how you’d like it to be. If your partner doesn’t meet you, then don’t settle; stand up. Stand up for better in every way. Make direct requests, set limits when appropriate, seek out help when necessary, and walk away if your partner leaves you with no other options. And no matter what, don’t settle.
Challenge: You deserve to be loved, cherished, listened to, honored, valued, and treated well at all times. Your partner deserves the same from you. Don’t ever settle for poor treatment or treat others poorly—for any reason. Raise the bar on yourself and others. Your lives deserve it.