Relationships are living entities. They move backwards and forwards in time. They evolve and decay, and they can die and be reborn. They can become locked in by their limitations or transformed beyond them.

You can evaluate your relationship regularly using the following ten most important dimensions. They can tell you whether your partnership is healthy or on a failure trajectory, and give you the chance to change what may be lacking to get your relationship back on track.

Read through them with your partner and share your responses with each other. Talk about where you agree and where you see things differently.

All relationships scar. No matter how much you care for each other, you are bound to make mistakes and cause distress in your relationship. Physical or emotional scar tissue can no longer take in nourishment or give up its toxicity. But relationships can grow beyond their scarring, surrounding those dead places with new growth.

There are four combinations of how much the relationship is scarring and how much it is able to grow. High scarring and low growing. Low scarring and low growing. High scarring and high growing. Low scarring and high growing. Of the four combinations, the last combination predicts the best relationship outcome.

Relationships will deepen or become superficial. Maintaining sincere curiosity in your partner’s thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, frustrations, and new desires is crucial. When you think you know each other so well that you don’t have to keep exploring each other anymore, your relationship is moving towards parallel roommates rather than intimate........

© Psychology Today