Love is complicated. It is emotion and passion and attraction.

It is confidence that permits the best type of love to thrive and a relationship survive.

The signs of confident love

1. Clear Vision: A confident love exists when a spouse sees the other spouse for who they really are. They do not project their own ego onto the other person. They celebrate who that person is. It takes truly confident love to allow another human being to be who they genuinely are and not who the other individual needs them to be. To not project the ego to need that other person to be and think as the other spouse does.

2. Voice Permitted: The spouse permits the other spouse to have and own their own, true voice. They allow the spouse their own feelings, opinions and things that matter most to them. They do not tell them how to feel or that they shouldn’t feel a certain way. They do not tell them that their opinions are wrong simply because they may have a differing opinion. In other words, they respect the significant other.

3. Real Humor: The relationship is absent of they type of repeated humor that is at the expense of the other spouse. Of course, this does not mean occasional spousal jokes. This means humor that is said to be jokingly, when in reality it is making fun of or putting the other person down. At times or occasionally this can be simply no big deal. However, no relationship that involves one person putting the other person down to make the other person feel better is healthy even if individuals believe it’s no big deal to do this. A joke is a joke. It is not making fun of a person in excess or repeatedly about their own flaws or weaknesses.

4. Right and Wrong: The spouse does not always have to be right. There is enough confidence to permit other opinions or a difference of opinion. The spouse is mature enough to not be threatened by someone else being right. They are not controlling enough to have to have the dominant answer and opinion. They recognize that everyone has different strengths and knowledge and therefore, other people, including the other spouse are at times right.

5. Unconditional Love: Roles are dangerous territory for some relationships. To put a person in a box as a husband / and or wife and the supposed roles that go along with that, threaten to abandon some aspects of respect in the relationship. That is not to say that some relationships that are very gender or role specific can’t thrive, but they do if there is genuine admiration and respect for the other spouse’s role in work and the relationship. More often, it causes individuals to stop treating one another with significant respect and friendship that relationships need to be healthy. Relationships are about unconditional love and all that goes along with it. It is not about individuals needing to fit into a certain box or role to make the other person happy.

6. Unselfish: Confident love is not threatened and therefore by nature is extremely generous. It is not controlling and takes joy in making the other spouse happy or allowing them what they want to do or need in life. It does not put selfish limits on the other spouse, denying them what they need emotionally, physically or professionally.

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