If A Woman Truly Loves You, She'll Avoid Doing These 12 Things At Almost All Costs
Krakenimages | Shutterstock Whether you believe in love at first sight or not, the truest form of connection between two people comes long after their first date. The real intimacy begins after the honeymoon phase is over, after you’ve shown each other your flaws and decided to stay together. Loving someone isn’t about being perfect, it's about consideration and trust. This has been shown to be true for women and men alike.
Healthy relationships are based on mutual respect and a foundation of trust that both people commit to keeping in tact. While some mistakes are impossible to avoid, there are certain things a woman who truly loves you will avoid doing. After all, when a woman is in love, she will do whatever she can to keep trust and connection alive.
If a woman truly loves you, she'll avoid doing these 12 things at almost all costs
1. Invalidate your feelings
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One thing a woman won’t do in a relationship with someone she loves is invalidate their feelings. She might not always understand her partner’s emotions, but she’ll work her hardest to make them feel seen, heard, and held.
According to psychologist Guy Winch, “Emotional validation is a crucial relationship skill and an incredibly useful one for conflict resolution, but doing it can feel scary and intimidating.”
He notes that people often avoid emotionally validating their partners because they want to “make the problem and blame go away by explaining why they shouldn't feel the way they do — by making their feelings go away.”
Yet all feelings hold value, even the painful ones, even the ones that are hard to hear. A good woman knows that emotionally validating her partner provides them with the security they need to process their feelings, which then allows them to move forward.
2. Withhold affection
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If a woman truly loves you, she will never withhold affection or attention as leverage to get what she wants. She fully understands the power of touch. She knows that love is an action word, and she doesn’t hesitate to share affection with her partner.
While physical intimacy is at the forefront of most couple’s minds, clinical psychologist Randi Gunther reveals that the happiest couples have four types of intimacy: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
She notes that each form of intimacy is connected to the others, explaining that “when both partners understand each other's thoughts and feelings, and how they are communicated in intimate interactions, they will be more likely to respond accurately to each other’s needs and requests.”
3. Shut down during hard conversations
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A good woman won’t shut her partner out during hard conversations. She won’t go silent, even when they’re talking about difficult things. She knows that effective communication is the lifeblood of a lasting relationship and that facing conflict together is significantly better than isolating herself.
While a good woman won’t tap out of tough discussions, she will protect her inner peace and ask for time alone, if she needs to process what’s happening. As licensed professional counselor Gina Binder explains, asking for quiet is fundamentally different from giving someone the silent treatment or stonewalling them.
A woman who truly loves you will also never use "the silent treatment" on you as a form of control. Certainly we all have times when we need to take a little time and not talk, especially when we are angry or hurt. But the silent treatment is a level of cruelty that therapists and other experts often insist could be an indication of something much worse to come.
4. Break promises
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Another thing a woman who truly loves you will avoid is breaking the promises she’s made. She keeps her word, because she knows that being reliable is part of trusting each other. It doesn’t matter if the promise is something small, like saying she’ll pick up milk on her way home from work, or something more emotionally resonant: A good woman won’t go back on her word.
Relationship coach David Steele shares that making the promise to nurture each other in a world “surrounded by cynicism and challenges” is how couples stay together over time.
He notes that love is more than a feeling. Love is a choice. Committed love requires both people to be present, to share their truths, and to be transparent about their “thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs,” in order to fully share themselves.
Steele reveals that relationships are mirrors that reflect each person back to themselves. The unifying “desire to be happy and feel loved” means that each person has to promise to let themselves be happy and receive the love being given.
5. Dismiss your dreams
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A woman who is truly in love will lift her partner up, providing the baseline of emotional security that’s needed to dream big. She will avoid being dismissive and will never mock or minimize their dreams
She believes in her partner and she believes in their shared goals. She knows that an essential part of nourishing the relationship means not doubting what they’re capable of doing, together.
When she feels it's important to give feedback that isn't fully positive, she will ask herself if it's kind, first. She will balance the importance of that objective feedback with the instinct to protect her partner's feelings, and only share what is necessary in order to be helpful and will not react out of spite or even carelessness.
Communication expert Aarti Saini explains, it's important to focus critique on specifics and not make it personal. She also advises putting the critique in the middle of two genuine compliments to keep the overall tone loving and positive.
6. Hold grudges
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If a woman truly loves you, she will do her best to give up grudges. She knows that, if she lets anger grow instead unchecked, it can blind couples from opportunities for connection and healing.
As psychotherapist Diane Barth explains, “a person who holds a grudge has a sense that the world is split up into those who are right and those who are wrong.”
“Some of us never quite move out of this tendency to view everything as only one way or another, and to protect ourselves from feeling that we are all-bad, we have to see ourselves as all-good,” she continued. “The problem is that both a grudge and the anger that accompanies it are often disproportionate to the ‘wrong.’”
Holding grudges often leads to the erosion of close relationships, as though the people involved are standing on opposite sides of a precipice they can’t cross. Yet when a good woman is in a relationship with someone she loves, she won’t hold grudges. She’ll center repair, while acknowledging that the only way out of a conflict is to move through it, together.
7. Resist personal growth
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Another thing that woman won't do in a relationship with someone she loves is resist growth, both as an individual and as a couple. She’ll listen when her partner brings up issues, and do her best to give her partner the benefit of the doubt that the issue is meaningful and do her best to take it seriously.
She’ll be receptive to feedback instead of defensive, and she’ll aim for change. Oftentimes, relationships end because two people outgrow each other, or one person moves forward while the other stays stuck. Yet when a couple holds each other accountable for showing up as their most authentic selves, they grow as a unit.
A woman who loves you will be willing to change to become more healthy and grow more connected. That's because she knows that the best part of being in a relationship with someone she loves is yet to come, as long as you grow together.
8. Be resentful of your success
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When a woman loves you, she will avoid being threatened by your success. After all, she knows that showing up for her partner requires more of her than being there during hard times: It means celebrating their victories, too.
When a person is meant to be in your life forever, resentment and contempt are non-starters. When a woman truly loves you, she will do her best to make sure she avoids these traps and the other "Four Horseman" that the Gottman Institute has found to be major predictors of breakups and divorce.
When a woman is in a relationship with someone she loves, she doesn't need to be the only star. She accepts loving and being loved, for exactly who she is. When her partner wins, she wins, too, which is why she’s not threatened by their achievements.
9. Ignore your perspective
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A woman who truly loves her partner will avoid anything that makes them feel ignored or unimportant. Because of that, she stays open-minded and receptive to new ideas, which is a sign she has high intelligence. Even if she disagrees with what her partner believes, she still makes room to hear a differing perspective. She holds space for them in a non-judgmental way.
She prioritizes respectful disagreements, which means she doesn’t force her opinion on them or try to change their mind. She understands that ignoring her partner’s perspective will lead to them feeling isolated, which eventually creates a rupture and a sense of distance that’s too wide to breach. Happy couples fight differently; they prioritize connection even when they disagree, and a woman who truly loves you will do her best to reach that goal.
10. Disrespect your family and friends
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Another thing a woman who truly loves you will avoid if she truly loves you is disrespecting your family and friends. Even if she finds someone grating or they have a personality difference, she will find a way to manage her annoyance respectfully.
She understands where her partner came from and she honors their roots. She accepts that love exists in different forms, and she doesn’t feel a need to compare herself to her partner’s college bestie or anyone else. She is secure enough to let her partner find joy in those people.
As long as her partner’s family members show her respect, she will welcome them into her life. There are certain situations that can make being close with her partner’s family a challenge, especially if her mother-in-law shows signs of being controlling or unkind, but still, a good woman will be civil, at the least. Instead of fighting, experts suggest she try to deflect, disagree respectfully, and, fi all else fails, take a little distance from them without drama.
A good woman knows that what she and her partner are creating together can include his family and friends, since love isn’t a finite resource, and there’s certainly enough to share.
11. Cross your boundaries
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Purposefully crossing her partner’s boundaries is something a woman won’t do in a relationship with someone she loves. She knows setting boundaries isn’t always easy, and she also knows that maintaining them can be even harder. A good woman in a relationship with someone she loves will respect her partner’s limits and listen to the boundaries they set for themselves.
As lawyer and author Susan J. Elliott explains, “Healthy boundaries give us healthy relationships, healthy self-esteem, and healthy well-being.”
Some people shy away from setting boundaries because they think it will make them seem demanding or ungrateful. Yet in reality, as Mayo Clinic Health explains, boundaries are key to overall well-being. They're a way of loving yourself and the people around you. People who care about you also care about your boundaries. They’re a tool for communication and meeting your own needs.
“Having strong boundaries makes you attractive to healthy people who like knowing where you stand,” Elliott concluded.
12. Refuse to apologize
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If a woman truly loves you, she will apologize and take accountability. She knows that conflict can only be repaired if people take ownership of their behavior, which often includes saying sorry. As psychologist Guy Winch explains, figuring out how to move forward after doing something wrong is essential to maintaining harmony in a relationship.
“Causing ‘harm’ to another person doesn’t mean we’re ‘bad people,’” he reveals. “We all make mistakes and cause harm or distress to others regularly, whether intentionally or not.”
“What matters when another person is harmed by our actions or inactions is what we do once we realize it. And what matters when we decide we need to offer an apology is whether we do so effectively,” he continues.
“The goal of every apology should be to garner authentic forgiveness. To that end, the focus of our apology has to be on the experience of the other person,” Winch concludes.
Having empathy and acknowledging that you hurt someone is part of offering a real apology. While fear and pride can stop people from fully owning their actions, a good woman who’s in a relationship with someone she loves holds herself accountable, which makes her relationship stronger than she ever imagined it could be.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
