4 Compatibility Milestones That Predict Long-Term Love
Before you take the next step, these four checkpoints can help you assess whether your relationship has long-term potential.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | May 27, 2025
In the early stages of a relationship, feeling a spark, sharing effortless conversations and sensing that someone truly "gets" you are all important for building connection and momentum. This immediate sense of compatibility helps people connect and enjoy each other's company. But while these feelings are necessary to get things started, they're not enough to sustain a relationship over the long haul.
Before taking a relationship to the next level, whether that means moving in, getting engaged or building a long-term life together, it's essential to look beyond surface-level harmony. True compatibility is about how two people navigate life and its various challenges together.
This is where emotional alignment either deepens or gradually begins to unravel. Some of the most telling signs of long-term potential don't show up in romantic gestures or exciting getaways, but in the ways partners show up for each other daily, when things aren't necessarily perfect. It's in these moments that the foundation of a lasting partnership is truly tested.
Here are four essential things you must know about your partner — each a key compatibility checkpoint — that can offer meaningful insight into whether your relationship is truly ready for the next step.
1. How Your Partner Responds To Stress
Anyone can be present and warm when life is easy but stress has a way of revealing deeper emotional patterns that often stay hidden in calmer moments. How your partner responds under pressure says a lot about their capacity for emotional regulation and their impact on the relationship's overall climate.
Research published in Stress and Health explored how emotion regulation influences the way couples cope with stress together, referred to as "dyadic coping." Surveying 239 heterosexual couples, the researchers looked at emotion regulation skills (including emotional awareness and impulse control) and how they shaped supportive or shared coping responses.
Interestingly, the findings showed that women's emotion regulation played a bigger role than men's in shaping how couples navigated stress. For instance, when women were more emotionally aware, both partners communicated stress more effectively and engaged in more supportive coping.
However, other traits like emotional acceptance or being highly goal-focused sometimes led to less supportive dynamics, suggesting that what's adaptive for an individual may not always strengthen the relationship.
This research underlines a vital checkpoint in compatibility: how your partner responds to stress and how you respond to theirs can deeply shape the emotional tone of your relationship. The real question is, do you understand and respect each other's stress responses and can you support each other through them?
2. How Your Partner Handles Conflict
Conflict is inevitable in any relationship, but what truly matters is how partners navigate it together. Understanding whether your partner takes accountability or deflects blame, listens without becoming defensive and genuinely works toward repair after fights is crucial.
Being in tune with your partner's conflict style helps you set realistic expectations and creates emotional safety. It shows you how they manage tension and show vulnerability when things get tough.
A 2020 study found that mindfulness in partners is associated with better relationship outcomes such as partnership quality and relational and sexual satisfaction, likely because mindful individuals tend to use more constructive conflict resolution styles such as positive problem solving.
Specifically, mindfulness helps partners stay engaged during conflicts rather than withdrawing, which is a destructive behavior that creates distance. The study also showed that mindfulness creates feelings of closeness between partners, which further improves relationship satisfaction.
Destructive conflict styles like withdrawal were found to be particularly damaging, while positive problem-solving and closeness acted as important mediators between mindfulness and relationship health.
Constructive approaches, such as staying engaged, listening and apologizing sincerely build emotional safety and trust in the relationship. Understanding your partner's conflict style and apology method helps nurture this positive dynamic and strengthen the relationship.
3. How Your Partner Finds Balance
How someone chooses to replenish offers deep insight into their inner world. Some individuals find restoration through solitude, stillness or creative reflection, while others feel rejuvenated through movement, community or engaging conversations.
Understanding and respecting your partner's preferred method of recharging is essential for emotional balance within the relationship. It's one thing to recognize their needs, but the real test lies in whether you honor them, especially when it differs from the way you recharge.
When these needs are overlooked or dismissed, it can lead to unintended resentment, emotional exhaustion or growing distance. For instance, one partner might seek connection after a taxing day, while the other requires solitude to recuperate. Without mutual understanding, both can feel unseen or misunderstood.
A 2019 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin combining insights from Self-Determination Theory and Family Systems Theory found that the healthiest and most constructive relationship responses, such as accommodation, forgiveness and acceptance, occur when partners experience both high relatedness (a sense of closeness and belonging) and high autonomy (a sense of self-direction).
Researchers also found that autonomy amplified the benefits of relatedness but couldn't replace it, meaning that feeling connected was necessary, but thriving together depended on also feeling free to be oneself.
Recharging in the way that best suits you is one way autonomy shows up in relationships. When you and your partner understand and respect each other's ways of regaining emotional energy, you're creating the foundation for deeper intimacy and long-term resilience. Failing to honor this can erode both autonomy and relatedness, weakening your connection.
4. How Your Partner Handles Boredom
Every relationship faces moments of routine and everyday monotony. How your partner responds to these quieter, less exciting times reveals a lot about their ability to sustain connection and find joy beyond the initial thrill.
Some people embrace the ordinary, finding comfort and meaning in small, consistent acts of care. Others may feel restless, seeking constant novelty or distraction, which can create distance over time.
A long-term study of married couples in the United States found that feeling bored in the relationship predicts lower satisfaction nearly a decade later. This effect happens because boredom reduces feelings of closeness between partners, and when couples feel less close, their overall happiness in the relationship drops.
Interestingly, this connection between boredom and satisfaction wasn't linked to relationship conflicts or tension, meaning boredom alone can weaken a relationship over time. The study also showed that couples who shared exciting activities could reduce boredom, which helped maintain their closeness and satisfaction.
These findings suggest that keeping relationships exciting and engaging is just as important as managing conflicts. Adding enjoyable and novel experiences can strengthen emotional bonds and improve long-term relationship happiness.
How your partner handles routine and boredom is crucial in understanding how you both can nurture closeness and keep your emotional connection alive. Recognizing and supporting each other's ways of finding meaning in everyday life can help build a stronger and more resilient relationship that thrives beyond the excitement of newness.
True compatibility is something that unfolds gradually, through how you and your partner navigate real life together. These checkpoints reveal the deeper layers of alignment that matter when you're considering a more serious commitment.
In this light, compatibility becomes less about seamless harmony and more about resilient alignment, where both partners are committed to growing with each other through all of life's seasons. That's when you know you're not just falling in love, but building something that can last.
Is your relationship showing positive signs of compatibility or causes for concern? Take this science-backed test to find out: Relationship Satisfaction Scale
A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.