Ten things that got us here
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I got engaged in January. I posted the videos today. These are the lessons that got us here.
I don’t write about my relationship much. Partly because it’s private, partly because the internet has enough people giving relationship advice who have no business giving it. But I posted our engagement videos today, and people have been asking how we make it work, so I figured I’d share what’s actually been true for me and Gina.
These are in no particular order, and none of them are complicated. That’s sort of the point.
1. Protect the ordinary nights.
The big gestures are easy. Trips, surprises, anniversaries. Those take care of themselves because there’s a built-in reason to show up. What’s hard is a random Wednesday when you’re both tired and there’s nothing special about the evening and the easiest thing in the world is to sit on opposite ends of the couch staring at separate screens. We’ve learned to protect those nights. Cook something together, even if it’s simple. Talk about something that has nothing to do with either of our jobs. The Wednesday nights are where the actual relationship lives.
2. Say the thing you’re holding back.
I used to swallow small frustrations because I didn’t want to make things tense. I’d let something bother me, tell myself it was minor, and move on. Minor things don’t disappear when you swallow them. They accumulate. Then one day you snap about something completely unrelated and the other person has no idea where it came from. A thirty-second conversation now prevents a thirty-minute argument later.
3. You can lean on your partner. You can’t collapse on them.
There’s a difference between sharing your bad day and making someone absorb all of your professional anxiety every single night. I crossed that line for a while without realizing it. Gina would listen, she’d support me, and slowly I was training her to expect the worst version of my day every time I walked through the door. I had to learn to process the heaviest stuff somewhere else, with a friend, in a journal, on a walk, so that when I came home I was bringing the real me, not just a pile of unresolved stress wearing my face.
4. “Low maintenance” is not a flex.
This one hit me hard. For years I thought not needing anything from a relationship was a strength. I handled everything myself, never asked for help, never said what I actually needed. I thought I was being easy to be with. What I was actually doing was making it impossible for Gina to know me. She can’t meet needs I refuse to name. That’s not independence. That’s just hiding.
5. Fight about the real thing.
If you’re arguing about dishes, you’re probably arguing about feeling unseen. We had an argument once about something so small I can’t even remember what started it, but it escalated fast, and when we finally slowed down enough to figure out what was going on, the real issue was that I’d been traveling for two weeks and she felt like she wasn’t a priority. The surface fight was meaningless. The thing underneath it was everything.
6. Keep a life that belongs to just you.
Gina has her friends, her routines, her world. I have mine. We don’t need to be each other’s entire social life, and when I see couples who try to merge everything, it usually suffocates both people. Come back with something to talk about. Have experiences that are yours. The relationship gets richer when both people are still growing on their own.
7. Stop keeping score.
I wrote a whole newsletter about this recently. It applies even more in a relationship. Who did what last, who planned more, who apologized first. The second you start tracking contributions, you’ve turned a partnership into an accounting exercise. Some weeks Gina carries more. Some weeks I do. It evens out if you stop measuring.
8. “I’m sorry you feel that way” is not an apology.
It’s a deflection wearing an apology’s clothes. I’ve learned to name the specific thing. “I’m sorry I checked my phone while you were telling me about your day. That was dismissive and you deserved my attention.” Takes five extra seconds. Lands completely differently.
9. Ask before you fix.
When Gina comes to me frustrated about something, my instinct is to map it out and solve it. Took me an embarrassing amount of time to learn that most of the time she doesn’t want a solution. She wants me to listen, validate that the thing is frustrating, and be present. I still catch myself mid-solution sometimes and have to stop and ask: “do you want me to help figure this out, or do you just need me to listen right now?”
10. Choose each other when it’s boring.
Everyone talks about choosing each other during the hard times. That matters. But I think the real test is the boring times. The months where nothing dramatic is happening, where the relationship isn’t being tested by anything external, where it would be easy to go on autopilot and stop paying attention. Those stretches are where people quietly drift apart without realizing it. We check in during those stretches. Nothing needs to be wrong for you to ask how things are going. The absence of problems doesn’t mean the presence of connection.
What it comes down to
I got really lucky finding Gina. But I’ve watched enough people get lucky with the right person and still let it slip away because they treated the relationship like something that would maintain itself. It won’t. The small moments are the whole thing. The way you listen on a Tuesday, the way you apologize when you’re wrong, the way you put your phone down when she’s talking. Nobody photographs those moments. Nobody posts them. But they’re the reason you get to the ones worth posting.
Thank you for reading,
— Scott
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Agreed. Paying attention to the little things is what keeps two people close for the long run.
Great advice. Stay in the habit of listening to each other and honoring the other person's point of view. Honoring the little things makes a great relationship.