The 14 Best Pieces of Relationship Advice I've Ever Received

I'll never forget the moment I stopped abandoning myself in relationships.

I was standing in my kitchen, staring down at my phone, willing it to light up. It had been four days since I'd reached out and heard nothing back. I tried to convince myself he was just busy. That he'd forgotten. That it was a simple mistake.

But my body knew better. And when the dam finally broke, it broke all the way.

Maybe I said too much, I thought, tears tracing their way down my cheeks. Maybe I am too much, I feared.

I replayed every conversation on a loop, searching for the thing I'd done wrong—the need I shouldn't have expressed, the feeling I should have hidden. I thought I was being patient and kind. But really, I was abandoning myself. Making excuses for someone else's emotional unavailability. Shrinking to fit inside his comfort zone. Silencing my own voice just to keep the peace.

And then it hit me, with the kind of clarity that only comes after you've cried hard enough: I was working so hard to be chosen by someone who wasn't even choosing me.

"What would it be like if you chose yourself this time?" my therapist asked later that week.

I sat with that question for a long time.

Eventually, I let go. Not because it was easy—but because I finally saw the misalignment clearly, and I loved myself enough to name it: That I wanted more than this person could offer me. That was the turning point. The beginning of a slow, sacred unraveling. Instead of performing for love, I started sitting with the parts of me that believed I had to earn it.

Because real love—the kind that expands and challenges you—won't ask you to abandon yourself in order to stay.

That experience cracked something open in me. And in the years since, I've found myself listening more closely to the relationship advice I used to brush off or misunderstand. The kind that doesn't just sound good, but lands—in your chest, your gut, your nervous system. The kind that helped me unlearn old patterns and finally choose connection that actually feels good to be in.

When I published The 11 Best Pieces of Advice I've Ever Received, so many of you wrote to me asking the same thing: "But what about love? What's the best relationship advice you've ever gotten?"

So here it is—the relationship truths that have forever etched themselves into my mind and changed the way I love. I hope at least one of them lands in your body the way they've landed in mine.

The Best Relationship Advice I've Ever Received

1. Don't abandon yourself to keep someone.

I used to play it cool. Pretend I didn't care. Wait too long to respond. Downplay what I really felt to avoid coming across as "too much."

But here's what I've learned the hard way: Shrinking yourself doesn't make you more lovable. It makes you invisible. And you can't be truly known or loved when you're hiding.

The moments I've felt closest to someone weren't when everything was easy. They were when everything was honest, raw, and real. When I stopped performing and started saying what was actually true for me. Not to get a certain reaction, but to set myself free.

Stop making yourself smaller to fit inside someone else's comfort zone. Your realness isn't the problem. It's the prerequisite.

Check out my book, Needy No More: The Journey From Anxious to Secure Attachment.

2. Consistency matters more than chemistry in relationships.

People will tell you what you want to hear. But their actions will show you what you need to know.

As I've gotten older, I've stopped clinging to words and started watching patterns. Chemistry is electric, yes—but it can also blind you to what's actually there. Real love doesn't just talk the talk; it walks the walk. It shows up, again and again, even when it's inconvenient. That's what safety looks like. That's what trust is built from.

Alignment over attraction. Reliability over reverence. Consistency over charisma. I'll take the former every single time.

3. The goal isn't to be chosen; it's to choose well.

For a long time, I was so focused on whether someone wanted me that I forgot to ask whether I actually wanted them. Not just the idea of them, not the potential of them, but who they were showing up as, consistently, right now.

That shift changes everything. When you stop auditioning for someone's approval and start genuinely evaluating whether this person is good for you, dating stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling like a process of discovery. 

Your people will reveal themselves. Trust that.

4. Conflict isn't the problem, how we repair it is.

Not everything is worth a fight. But when something matters enough to address, remember this: It's not conflict that breaks a relationship, it's what happens after.

When you’re in the heat of it, ask yourself: Am I trying to be right, or am I trying to be real? Healthy love makes room for disagreement, but it does so with care and accountability. Choose your battles. Stay grounded. And when rupture happens—because it will—make repair, not blame, the priority. The couples who last aren't the ones who never fight. They're the ones who always find their way back to one another after they do.

5. Healthy relationships aren't found, they're built.

Love isn't something you fall into and then coast through. It's something you tend to, proactively and intentionally, day in and day out.

If you're not checking in, creating connection, and doing the work to learn one another, the relationship doesn’t grow. It might even wither. The best relationships I've ever witnessed are the ones where both people keep showing up, especially when it's hard. Especially when it's inconvenient. Especially when the spark needs to be tended rather than simply felt.

6. Don't forget to enjoy each other.

Yes, relationships take work. But they're also meant to be a source of joy, presence, and laughter.

Sometimes we get so caught up in what isn't working that we forget to feed what is. Celebrate the small moments. Have inside jokes. Make space for play, not just processing. Emotional safety isn't only built through hard conversations, it's built through shared delight, too. Love doesn't just have to feel safe. It's allowed to feel fun.

7. Space is healthy in a relationship.

Closeness is beautiful. But without room to breathe, it can quietly become suffocating.

I used to think needing space meant something was wrong, that distance was rejection in disguise. But time apart is often how we come back to ourselves, so we can return to each other more whole. You can be deeply devoted and still need room to be an individual. Healthy love honors both. In fact, it depends on both.

8. Operate as a team.

It's not you versus me; it's us versus the issue.

When conflict arises, it's easy to slide into blame, defensiveness, or power struggles. But the moment you remember you're on the same side, everything shifts. You stop trying to win and you start trying to understand. That one reframe—that we're in this together—has the power to completely change the temperature of a conversation or an entire relationship.

9. Healing happens relationally.

We talk a lot about doing the inner work of emotional healing. And yes, that matters. Building self-trust, understanding your patterns, learning to meet your own needs. But here's what often gets left out: Healing is inherently relational. If we’re wounded in relationship, we recover in relationship, too.

It's being truly seen by a safe person that shows us what we actually deserve. It's co-regulation, the nervous system settling in the presence of someone steady, that teaches us on a visceral level that distance doesn't have to mean danger and that agitation doesn’t always result in abandonment. You can do years of solo work and still have it transform the moment you experience what it feels like to be held by someone who doesn't flinch.

So yes, do the inner work. But don't make the mistake of thinking you can heal in isolation. Safe people aren't a reward for doing the work. They're how the work gets done.

10. You don't have to earn love.

Love that must be earned through performance, perfection, or people-pleasing isn't love. It's a transaction, not a relationship.

Real love doesn't ask you to hustle or prove yourself worthy. It sees you. Accepts you. Stays curious about you even when you're messy. 

If you find yourself constantly working to keep someone's love, that's worth paying attention to. And potentially reevaluating. 

11. Secure relationships will still challenge you.

We sometimes imagine a "secure relationship" as one where nothing is ever hard, where there’s no friction, no conflict, no growth edges. But real security isn't about comfort. It's about staying connected through the discomfort.

The right person won't always make you feel good. But they will make you feel seen. They'll disagree with you and stay in the room. They'll witness you at your worst and choose you anyway. That is the thing worth holding out for. Not someone who never challenges you, but someone who challenges you with love.

12. How you feel with them matters more than how you feel about them.

You can love someone deeply and still be wrong for each other. This is one of the hardest truths in all of love, and one of the most important.

So many of us stay in dynamics that look like love from the outside but feel like anxiety on the inside. We're intoxicated by who someone is while quietly depleted by how the relationship actually feels. Those are two very different things, and learning to tell them apart changed everything for me. The question worth asking isn't just, Do I love this person? It's: Do I feel like I can truly be my full self around them? Am I at ease more often than I'm on edge? Your nervous system usually knows the answer long before your heart is ready to admit it.

13. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s apathy.

Hate gets a bad reputation as love's nemesis. But hate, like love, means someone still matters. Still stirs something. Still has the power to move you.

Apathy is something else entirely. It's the slow fade of someone who has stopped caring enough to try, and it's far more corrosive than anger, because at least anger means the relationship still has a pulse. It's not the person who fights for the relationship you should fear losing. It's the one who stopped feeling like it was worth fighting for. Love, even at its most imperfect, never stops trying.

14. Never chase anyone.

When someone pulls away, your initial instinct might be to try harder. To overexplain, over-function, or make yourself easier to love. It feels like love. But it's just another expression of fear.

What actually works is simpler and scarier: Say what's true. Tell them you're happy to give them space, but that you need to know when they're coming back—because the uncertainty doesn't feel good or fair. Or that you're all in for connection, but not for something that only seems to go one way.

That's not an ultimatum. Nor is it a manipulation tactic. It's just two people being honest about what they need. And here's the thing about that kind of honesty: it either brings the right person closer, or it shows you clearly that they were never quite as in it as you were. Both are better than continuing a cycle that was slowly convincing you the problem was you.

Ready to Change the Way You Love?

None of this advice came easy. I didn't wake up one day magically knowing how to set boundaries or stay regulated during conflict. I had to unlearn years of people-pleasing, codependency, and fear of abandonment. And if you have an anxious attachment style, you’re probably all too familiar with what that journey feels like.

You try to do everything "right." You care too much, too quickly. You lose yourself in the hope that someone else will finally stay. And when things fall apart, you blame yourself once again.

But it doesn't have to stay that way.

When you understand your nervous system, when you learn to soothe your fears instead of spiral in them, when you build the kind of self-trust you've always craved from others—something shifts. Not all at once, and not without effort. But gradually, the relationships you attract start to look different. The ones you used to tolerate start to feel less tolerable. You find yourself saying the true thing instead of the safe thing. You stop shrinking. You stop chasing. You start to feel, maybe for the first time, like love is something you get to be part of rather than something you have to earn.

If that's the kind of healing you're ready for, I'd be honored to support you. Learn more about my coaching program for folks with an anxious attachment style, and set up a free consultation to speak with me here or at the module below.

Because love gets a whole lot easier when you stop abandoning yourself to find it.