My favorite moments in relationship are the moments that flow.

You know the ones, right?

The moments when you just “get” each other. When interacting with each other feels effortless, like a well-rehearsed dance.

When you know what your partner is going to do or say before they do or say it. And it still makes you smile.

When your time together feels both mundane and exciting. Like home and an adventure.

In those moments, we rarely doubt our connection. We feel confident that we are right where we’re meant to be.

That this person is our person.

But anyone who’s been in a relationship also knows that those moments are only a snapshot of reality.

Because relationships are also full of the other moments. The moments that feel like anything but flow.

When you disagree and can’t come to a compromise.

When you’re in a bad mood and everything they say bothers you.

When simple conversations devolve into arguments.

When you’d rather go to bed angry than try to talk it out.

When you struggle to connect.

When you realize how different you are.

When the mundane moments start to feel suffocating.

When the exciting moments start to feel overwhelming.

When the traits that once seemed quirky and cute become the things that try your patience.

When you know they love you but aren’t sure they like you.

When you know you love them but aren’t sure you like them.

In a healthy relationship, these moments are normal—as long as they’re not constant. We all change and grow and go through rough patches.

But they can also cause doubt to creep in. They can make us wonder if all the time and energy and effort we’ve put into this relationship, this person, has been worth it. Or if we should just cut our losses and run.

So how do we know when it’s time to double down and recommit to our relationship and when it’s time to consider walking away for good?

Of course, there are signs we can look out for and boundaries we can enforce but I’ve always felt that it comes down, like most things in relationship, to choice. To each person deciding what they are and aren’t willing to deal with.

Samantha Sophia, a content creator who focuses on “intentional parenting and self-reparenting,” shared a powerful video recently that discussed this choice.

These are the questions we need to ask to figure out for ourselves whether our relationship is worth sticking around for. Whether this person, with all their quirks and beliefs and issues, can and should be our person.

If you’re tired of wondering, watch this:

 

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“The day I knew I was ready to marry my then-boyfriend, now husband, was the day I answered yes to this question:

If nothing improves with this man, if my list of things that annoyed me the most about him stayed the same, maybe even slightly gets worse, could I still be happily married to him? Could I enjoy the journey that is marriage with these variables at play? With these personality traits still the same?

So I had to take a long, hard pause. I had to soul search. Could I accept him as is? Always and as near to forever as could be without terrorizing him with my expectations of change? Could I?

Now, there are a lot of things about my husband that’s only gotten better, has only improved, and there are some things he’s been working on since he’s been about 18. And when honestly in my soul I could say yes to this, this reality, this truth, then I knew I was ready to get married. To marry him.

But I owed myself and I owed him me asking myself the question. Facing it and then moving in that truth.”

The question that hit the hardest for me was this:

“Could I accept him as is…without terrorizing him with my expectations of change?”

This is where so many of us struggle. We block ourselves from being in the flow because while we love our partners, we often think we could love them more or the relationship could be better or our connection would be stronger if they just changed this one thing. Or fixed that other thing.

We see potential where we used to see a person.

So the next time we are struggling in our relationship—struggling to see the person we fell in love with, struggling to reconnect to our home and our adventure—we need to ask ourself these questions. And then we need to take the time and space to answer honestly.

Because we owe each other that much.

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