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“Are you happy in your relationship?” Your answer should have been quick, simple, clean, and without hesitation. If there was a lot of hemming and hawing going on, that’s a bit of a red flag. “It’s not that simple!” you might say. But it is. Or at least it should be. Look, it’s not like overwhelmingly happy couples never, ever have a hiccup, a little argument, a bump in the road, or a difference of opinions. It’s that even after those and during those, they could still say, with absolute certainty, that their lives are immeasurably better with one another, than without one another.
I think that, for many reasons, our vision can become a little bit foggy about relationships. Maybe you’ve had so many bad ones that your standards have just dropped tremendously. The mere fact that you and your partner don’t yell at each other every hour may make you believe you’re in a “great” relationship, even though you’re not exactly thrilled to be around each other. Or, maybe something about your past—your childhood, or your parents’ relationship—planted the idea, deep in your subconscious, that your partner doesn’t have to be your best friend. Maybe you think partners are just utilitarian parts of life that help you run households and raise kids, but that’s it.
Somewhere along the way, we can lose that hope for magic in a relationship—for that sensation that, when you’re with your person, you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, and you’re so lucky to have found each other. And that, to me, is so sad. I know right away when someone isn’t happy in her relationship because the simple question, “Are you happy?” bumps her. There’s a lot of explaining and hedging. And there just shouldn’t be. Here are simple signs that you are happy in your relationship (or you aren’t.)
You light up when he gets home
If you had a tail, it would wag when you hear your partner park his car outside and approach the front door. When you’re home without him, the house feels empty. And the second he gets home, the house feels full of warmth and love. On the flipside, if the sound of his car pulling in the driveway gives you a tinge of anxiety or a feeling like, “Fun’s over,” that’s not good.
