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Quotes That Define True Love

Reviewed by Aaron Horn, LMFT · November 01, 2020 ·

Having a healthy relationship can be challenging. Even two people who seem perfectly compatible with each other can still struggle to make things work and avoid the common challenges that relationships face. Many people struggle to have a clear understanding of what true love or healthy relationships look like. These healthy relationship quotes can help.

Many times, people base their idea of true love on what they see in the movies or on television. However, true love isn’t easy and it’s not like a movie. To have a healthy relationship, it requires hard work, time, and effort. It requires forgiveness and two people that are willing to stick together through the good times and the bad.

Relationship quotes about the hard times

Every relationship goes through difficult times. When the initial early stages of love wear off, it doesn’t mean that it’s time for the relationship to end. True love weathers the storms together. Forgiveness, trust, and open communication play important roles.

  1. “You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.” – Jodi Picoult
  2. “True love isn’t without problems, it has many obstacles, true love is working through all of them and coming out happy with that someone on the other side.” – Unknown
  3. “Hold no grudges and practice forgiveness. This is the key to having peace in all your relationships.” – Wayne Dyer
  4. “Problems in relationship occur because each person is concentrating on what is missing in the other person.”- Wayne Dyer
  5. “You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.” — Epicurus
  6. “You know you truly love somebody when they hurt you so badly, but all you can think about it is the times when they made you smile.” – Unknown
  7. “Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.” – Barbara Johnson

Healthy relationship quotes

These quotes can help give you a good picture of what healthy relationships look like and what it takes to get there.

  1. “The rules for a healthy relationship is communication, cooperation, and determination.” – Marquis Heath
  2. “Love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” –ThichNhatHanh
  3. “Don’t just be a taker; healthy relationships require balance. Give with your words and be extra generous with your deeds.” – Steve Maraboli
  4. “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” – Donald Miller
  5. “A healthy relationship is a feast of affection/giving for both people; not one receiving crumbs and trying to convince themselves it’s enough.” – Shannon Thomas
  6. “A healthy relationship will never require you to sacrifice your friends, your dreams, or your dignity.” – Dinkar Kalotra

What makes a healthy relationship? Quotes

Healthy relationships don’t just happen on their own. They happen when people work at them. There are some things that you can do to help foster a healthy relationship. This can include things like being honest, putting the other person before yourself, and practicing forgiveness.

  1. “Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.” – Brene Brown
  2. “We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.” — Joyce Meyer
  3. “Every relationship has its own problems. But sometimes what makes it perfect is if you still wanna be together, when things go the wrong way.” – Unknown
  4. “I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough..” ― Nicholas Sparks
  5. “Every good relationship, especially marriage, is based on respect. If it’s not based on respect, nothing that appears to be good will last very long. – Amy Grant
  6. “Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.” – Gloria Steinem
  7. “True love is knowing a person’s faults, and loving them even more for them.” – Unknown

Unhealthy relationships quotes

Understanding what healthy relationships don’t look like can also help you understand how to know if you have a healthy relationship or not.

  1. Sometimes, I don’t know what haunts me more.. The memories of you… Or the happy person I used to be.” – Ranata Suzuki
  2. “Watching you walk out of my life does not make me bitter or cynical about love. But rather makes me realize that if I wanted so much to be with the wrong person how beautiful it will be when the right one comes along.
  3. “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” ― Neil Gaiman
  4. “The worst feeling is to be ignored once, then twice, then again and again by someone you consider precious.” – Betsy Kenton
  5. “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” ― Anais Nin
  6. “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone, it’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone.” – Robin Williams
  7. “If you walked away from a toxic, negative, abusive, one-sided, dead-end, low vibration relationship – you won.”

More healthy love quotes

  1. “The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together.” – Robert C. Dodds
  2. “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” -Mignon McLaughlin
  3. “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” ― Pablo Neruda
  4. “When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.” – Deepak Chopra
  5. “True love brings up everything – you’re allowing a mirror to be held up to you daily.” – Jennifer Aniston
  6. “True love is selfless. It is prepared to sacrifice.” – Sadhu Vaswani
  7. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” – Dr. Seuss

Is your relationship struggling?

If you’re having a difficult time in your relationship and wondering if it’s normal or not, you can take this relationship quiz to help you get a better understanding. If your relationship is struggling, there are things that you can do to address them. It doesn’t mean that you need to call it quits.

How to build a healthy relationship

If you want to build a healthy relationship, it can help to work on developing good communication skills. Open and honest communication is the best thing for a relationship.

Healthy relationships also have a give and take. If one person in your relationship is always giving and the other is always demanding their way, it can set an unhealthy tone. Looking for ways to compromise during disagreements can go a long way for the health of your relationship.

Remember that love is a choice that you have to make on a daily basis, as you read in the quotes above. It’s not just a feeling or something that’s always going to come easily for you. Some days may feel better than others. However, you have the choice to love your partner each day and work together with them.

Keep in mind that the grass is usually greener on the other side for one of two reasons. First, you might not be getting the complete picture. It’s easy to look at the relationships of others and think that it’s better than yours because you aren’t seeing the things that happen behind closed doors. The other reason it might seem like other couples have healthier relationships is because they may be working on their relationship more than you are.

If your relationship is struggling and you want to improve it, consider talking to a couple’s counselor to learn strategies that you can use to improve your relationship.

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