The most important part of a relationship is being there for each other. Through the good times and bad, judgment-free. A little laughter and a lot of love doesn’t hurt, either.
To know he’s a true keeper, you must go through all the stages of a relationship first: from meeting to falling in love, from meeting the parents, to having life throw a bunch of shit at you to try and tear you apart.
Stage 1: The meet cute
Wherever you met, it’s adorable . . . even if it was at a bar at 2am. You’ll never forget the first time you laid eyes on him, unless you were blackout wasted—but it’s still as adorable as meeting in an elevator or on an airplane at a reasonable time to be awake.
Stage 2: The "Does he really like me?” phase
He texts you back right away. He straight up tells you that he likes you and really wants to see you, and take you out. He texts you more emojis than you text your best friends. He obviously likes you, but for some reason (i.e: assholes of your love life’s past) you still wonder if he really likes you or not.
Stage 3: The infatuation phase
Your friends tell you that you are crazy, and you totally are. He’s all you talk about. You spend the majority of your day texting him—your friends probably hid your phone from you so they’d get to see your face for once. You’re both obsessed with each other and can’t get enough.
Stage 4: The unapologetically clingy phase
You’re sill obsessed with him, but wonder, "is he still as obsessed with me as I am with him?" You’re scared to ask him to hang out tonight, because you just hung out last night. But you ask anyways, and he says yes. You worry about asking him to hang out again, but right before you’re about to ask, he asks you. You’re equally obsessed with each other and want to see other all the time.
Stage 5: The "Love is blind” phase
You’re falling in love and kind of forgot about everything else in your life. Your friends? You didn’t mean to forget about them, but you just don’t see as much of them anymore. You forgot what happened on your favorite TV show last night because you were texting him the entire time. You don’t remember what your job is. You don’t remember where you live. Love has temporarily blinded you, and you don’t give a f*ck.
Stage 6: The “I love you” stage
You love him. You know it. But you don’t want to be the one to say it first. He knows this, so he says it.
Stage 7: The "Oh wait . . . we fight now” phase
He was 30 minutes late. Or maybe you were 30 minutes late. For the first time, one of you said “I don’t like when you . . .” and it started your first fight. Now, you have fights pretty frequently, and you worry you’re doomed because you thought you would never fight. Ever. But then you both realize that real couples fight, and it would be totally weird if you didn’t.
Stage 8: The “time to meet the parents, I guess” phase
At this point, your lives are intertwined. You’ve introduced each other to your friends, and you all get along. You see each other pretty much every day. You have an imaginary dog together. So now it’s time to meet the parents. You freak out in the days leading up to it, but it goes really well and you didn’t even have to try. Oh, and he’s totally more like his dad than he thinks. And he’s totally a mama’s boy in denial.
Stage 9: The “we don’t have sex as much as we used to, but that’s ok” phase
Life gets in the way. You’re tired all the time, or you're eating. You're in the important stage of your relationship where it doesn’t even matter if you have sex. Just being with each other, even if you’re not doing anything, even when you’re not talking, makes you happier than anything else in this world. You don’t have sex just to get off anymore: you have sex because it’s a way of expressing your love for each other.
Stage 10: The “we see each other all the time but I still miss you when you’re gone for an hour” phase
You’ve been at work for, like, thirty minutes on a Monday morning, but all you can think about is laying in bed with him all weekend watching Netflix. He's the same.
Stage 11: The life f*cking sucks phase
Something terrible happened. Maybe one of you lost a job, a family member, a friend. You’re depressed. He’s depressed. Someone or something is trying to tear you two apart. Whatever it is, it sucks. And some days it seems like you’ll never make it through . . . like this will be the thing that breaks you up. But it won’t, because he’s there for you every step of the way, and so are you. You’re ready to do this whole life thing together, even if it means a lot of tears. But for every tear there will be a thousand laughs, and a handful of "what was that even about?" fights that you'll laugh about for years to come.
Stage 12: The “is this for forever or what?” stage
You’ve been together for what feels like forever—in the best way. You can’t imagine your life without him. But can he? This is when shit gets real. You straight up ask him where this is going. Where his life is going, compared to yours. He doesn’t lie to you. He doesn’t know where life will take him, but he wants to find out with you.
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