What Makes a Partnership

"A love that is guaranteed never to end, no matter what happens." That is what the German band Sportfreunde Stiller wished for. And found it on the pitch. But can men really only swear eternal loyalty to soccer?Hitting a crisis despite eternal loyaltyI love my partner. I would never cheat on him. He is the most important person in my life!" They all say that. Men and women alike in a partnership. And yet both of them end up together in the divorce statistics at some point. The dream of accompanying your partner for several decades, or even until the last breath, has burst. "They're hitting a crisis!" Sooner or later in every partnership. That is completely normal.

• Routine
• Boredom
• too perfect
• no arguing

But it's not (only) because of that that one in three marriages in Germany fails. However paradoxical it may sound, psychotherapist Doris Wolf from Mannheim and psychologist Fridtjof Nussbeck from Bielefeld University note: "The worse and more uncertain the times, the longer-lasting partnerships are!" Conversely, that means: "The better an individual partner can develop professionally and personally in society, the more socially integrated he is in

networks, the faster he is ready to give up a bond again!" This shift in values has long since become a matter of course for us in the 21st century. Women can have careers these days and are therefore, compared with past times, no longer as dependent on the man as the family's breadwinner.

The partnership as it should be

It has seemingly become easy to end a partnership at any time and to replace the shortcomings of the ex-partner with a new partnership. "We are making illusions about our dream partner here!" But that's a good thing, too. According to a study by the psychologist trio Sandra Murray, John Holmes and David Griffin, we need this romantic idealization in order to be happy in the long term. Couples who adore their partners from the start and always see the positive side even in each other's flaws are not naive. They actually argue less, the study found.

Eyes wide open when choosing a partner?

Having high expectations of a partnership is therefore counterproductive.

But it shouldn't be equated with a naive start to relationship happiness, either. That begins with yourself. Anyone who has their own interests and ideas about life will be able to develop them much more freely in a partnership. Then it's not hard to find a partner for life among the large number of potential candidates. One who shares your ideas and with whom you can develop the vision of living together long-term. You can wish for a lifelong partnership from the start. But this form of partnership only becomes truly tangible with the right counterpart.