1 year ago, I recorded a podcast about my love life and quest to find my person.

Little did I know, that 3 months later, I’d meet and fall in love with Jen Stone (or that we’d move in together 3 weeks later)!

But as anyone in a committed relationship will tell you: it’s not always easy. 

Many people fantasize of a fairytale love, where they will find the person of their dreams, and live happily ever-after. But the truth is, finding love won’t make all your problems disappear or make you immune to hardship. Love and partnership will likely uncover a whole new set of challenges that will need to be addressed if your newfound relationship has any chance of sticking around.

And Jen and I are no different.

Despite our deep love, incredible intimacy, and all the amazing times we’ve shared, we’ve definitely had our challenges (and even broke-up for a short time). But instead of choosing to run away from the issues and each other, we’ve chosen to learn and grow together, and practice these 5 principles.

5 Principles for Lasting Love

•Keep choosing each other. Focus on the vision of what you want together instead of getting hyper focused on the problems and tiffs.
 

•Keep getting to know each other. Don’t avoid tough conversations and strive to get to the root of each other’s wants, needs, and triggers – so you can best support and communicate with one another.
 

•Take responsibility. The blame game is rarely effective or fully accurate, so take responsibility for your role/actions/communication and what you are committed to moving forward.
 

•Don’t expect your partner to complete you, but rather to complement you. One person can’t fulfill every single need that has historically taken an entire village of friends and family to fill. 
 

•Don’t try to change your partner; lovingly empower them to be who theywant to be (even if it feels scary or threatening). 

Feel free to give these principles a try and let me know how it goes.  And, if there are any great tips I missed, let me know 🙂

Wishing you an amazing week full of intimacy and love!

Much love,
Mark

PS: If you are curious to learn more about Jen and my story, we go in-depth as to how we met, and our highs and lows over the past eight months. Tune in here.