At the beginning of any relationship, growth is natural and almost inevitable.
The first stage is about getting to know each other and enjoying many firsts—before disappointment or boredom has a chance to set in.
However, I firmly believe that after the honeymoon period, growth no longer happens by default. Of the many relationships I’ve witnessed—marriages, friendships, siblings—most coast along for many years without changing or growing.
The danger here is that people do change over time, but if the relationship itself isn’t alive and evolving, you’ll eventually find yourself standing next to someone you no longer recognize.
Some people can adapt, but most end up drifting further and further apart.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
If you want the best years of your life to be filled with deep friendships, then you need to cultivate the ones you have now so they can grow into something even richer. The key is to grow together, even as you both grow and change in small ways each year.
I’ve tried to do this in my own life—starting with my marriage and extending to friendships and relationships with each of my four and soon-to-be five children. I have garnered a bit of experience to share with you.
How to Nurture and Grow Healthy Ongoing Relationships
Growth doesn’t happen by default—we must choose to do it. Here are my best tips for growing together:
1. Notice What Energizes the Other Person
Growth in a relationship is about keeping the spark of life alive. Try to notice the times when your friend or loved one is most animated or excited about a subject. What is something that person never wants to miss? What does that person daydream about? Notice these sparks and fan them into a flame in order to add energy to your relationship.
2. Handle Conflict as a Shared Problem
A bedrock principle for all my relationships is a firm belief that any problem is a shared one. We will hear each other out, even offer up a defense, but at the end of the day, our goal is mutual: to preserve the relationship and reach a settlement we both feel is fair.
3. Make Decisions as a Team
Not every decision needs equal input from all sides, but it’s vital that key decisions are weighed out together. In our own minds, we may feel that our way is obviously best. That leaves you with a choice best summed up by an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” At some point, you must decide what you value most, and if it’s friendship, then you will have to lay down your ego and compromise for the sake of going together.
4. Talk Openly About How Each of You Is Changing
I’m grateful that many of the marriages I know best are going strong, but I’ve seen quite a few business partnerships turn sour in the past few years. In many ways, business partnerships are like marriages, except we go into them with less planning and elevate the stress of financial decisions immediately.
The commonality I see in most failed partnerships is that one partner begins to change while the other feels abandoned. Maybe it’s a change in strategy or priorities in life—if the other partner isn’t brought along for the journey, that partner feels as if he is losing the person he agreed to partner with.
5. Focus on What You Want More of in the Relationship
Focusing on what I want, rather than what I don’t, has served me well since I began applying it to my parenting style. Almost instinctually, we focus much of our mental energy on what is going wrong around us. As a parent, that sometimes means I spend more time pointing out what my kids are doing wrong instead of enjoying their inherent playfulness.
Lately, I’ve changed that—I’m enjoying them more and appreciating the parts of our relationship I want more of. The by-product is a closer friendship, and interestingly, far more opportunities to speak to the kinds of people I hope they become.
6. Keep Making Time for Fun–Not Just Productivity
Any long-term partnership or friendship tends to drift toward practicality over time. Maybe that’s just because the demands of life push us toward efficiency, and we respond by being more intentional with our time. However, unstructured, unplanned fun is one of the greatest strengtheners of a relationship.
Happy memories create strong emotional bonds that you rely on and draw from when times are tougher. Such a foundation is not something you can build once and forget about—you have to keep leaving space for play in your friendship, or it’ll grow old and brittle.
Good relationships are the peak of human flourishing. There is nothing better in life than to be surrounded by people you love and who love you in turn—and that won’t happen by chance. It requires years of intentional growth in the same direction—a journey that is both enjoyable and counter to our natural drift. The investment is worth every minute.