5 Ways Your Relationship Changes As You Grow Up, Learn And Mature

I am emotional, but I can also be very unemotional. What does that make me? I believe the word I am looking for, is human.

See, humans can be cold and uncaring when they do not feel anything, but loving and caring when they do. These things, however, become more apparent with age and maturity.

The other day, I thought about the relationships in which I have been. Some were more important to me, and some not so much. I do not regret anything because I have finally learned what I want in a partner. I have also learned what I can offer.

I thought about how different my relationships were when I was younger, and I realized how much things change with time and age. At first, you're into something so passionately, and suddenly, you find yourself turned off, preferring something totally different.

There are five aspects of relationships that fundamentally change with age:

The Looks

While good looks are still important, beauty has found its way into many new forms. I will admit, I always wanted the queen of everything. Whether it was the queen of my school, or just the queen of the day, wandering the streets of the city in which I was living.

I wanted her, and oh, she was pretty. The problem was it is pretty much all she was and it never lasted.

The shell is great to an extent, but it gets old after a while. If a person's core is not one you can embrace and naturally gain from, a relationship will not work.

There is a phenomenon called “growing beauty,” and if you haven’t already experienced it, it is yet to come and you will love it. See, a person can be good-looking, but when you add love into the mix, the person becomes gorgeous.

The more emotions invested in a person, the more beautiful he or she becomes. This invites the idea, and strongly states, that true beauty is within a person and not on the outside. 

The Trade-Off

She is gorgeous; she is funny, and she is good in bed, but she is not hungry or curious about life. She does not want a career, and she cannot add any input to your conversations that isn’t about her friend's relationship with Greg or how frustrated she is over Kara’s disloyalty.

Growing up usually means more experience and a better education, which ultimately leads to a better understanding of what a person wants in life and relationship-wise.

You want to be with someone who consistently adds and enhances your life. To draw strength from someone, and to be able to have a good, deep conversation about things is fulfilling and rewarding.

Not only should you want someone with whom you have great chemistry, you also want someone who delivers an intellectual trade-off.

Values

Values and culture are closely related, yet they are not the same. Your values come in the form of what is beneficial, what is beautiful, what is desirable, etc.

Values usually do not change much, especially not the ones I call skeleton values. These are the values set as a backbone, the ones you build your life around. If they are similar to your partner's, it will make things much easier because you will strive toward and live up to the same things.

If you have a lot of disagreement and miscellany, there’s a greater possibility you will end up feeling you are too different.

Culture

If you live in a certain city, the girl(s) you date live in that same city. Then, you have the occasional summer camp flirt and culture probably mattered even less then; it was just exiting, nothing else.

But, as you get older, culture becomes important. You see, culture is sneaky. Why? Because when you are in love, you strive to be an open-minded person -- open to diversity, open to change and open to new things.

Yet, after some time, you tend to slowly but steadily fall back to how things were when you grew up, and to how things always have been. You grew up in a specific environment where things played out in one way; she grew up in an environment where it played out in a different way.

That doesn’t mean it’s bound to fail, but it does mean you will have a lot of disagreements on how things should be, and you will often find yourself in drama because of misunderstanding or confusion.

Culture is something that becomes more obvious as an important pillar of a relationship as time goes by.

Being able to be yourself

Being able to be yourself is something all boys and girls, men and women try to accomplish. Yes, I said accomplish. Believe you me, it is easier said than done.

It is rare to meet someone who makes you feel so comfortable that you can truly be yourself. When I was younger, I would be myself, but not myself -- not 100 percent.

I would be Mr. 99 Percent. I could never find it in myself to enjoy playing video games whenever I had a girl around. I also never felt comfortable enough to start painting on my comic book sketches.

My reality today is much different: I cannot -- actually, I will not -- be with a girl with whom I cannot be myself. Life is too short, I need to be myself, 100 percent.