You finally found a wonderful man and your relationship is amazing.  If you are like most women, though, those seeds of doubt are already sowed and beginning to grow.  That nagging fear is in the back of your mind telling you that you need to keep working to make sure you don’t loose this great guy.

How do you keep your relationship growing and alive?  How do you keep a houseplant alive?  These may seem like two completely different topics, but they actually are quite similar.

You can learn a lot about relationships from gardening.  With a houseplant you must feed it, water it, nurture it or it will die.  The same things are needed to keep a relationship alive and growing.

It may be a crazy analogy, but it is true.  Your relationship requires you to do some much needed nurturing to ensure that it lasts.  Here are three things you must do if you want this man to stick around and this budding romance to turn into a blooming relationship.

Learn Acceptance

You know how he has those little habits that seem to annoy other people, but you think they are cute?  Give it time and they will annoy you, too.  Nobody is perfect and once you get through the initial phase of your relationship, all those cute little quirks will become annoying unless you learn to accept them.

Most of the little things are things we can accept, but we have to stop pushing them aside and laughing them off.  It is far better to just say they are annoying.  Then you can accept them and move on.

Being in a relationship is about realizing that your man is not perfect, but that you are fine with him just the way he is.  If you cannot completely accept him then there is not much of a future for this relationship.

Get Fighting Right

Every relationship, no matter how perfect it may seem, has its problems.  People do not always agree.  We bicker.  We fight.  It happens in every relationship and is not something you can avoid forever.

In good relationships, fighting is done in a constructive way.  Knowing the right way to fight will help your relationship grow.  When you don’t know how to fight, you only start to pick apart the relationship and send it on the path to splitsville.

Good fighting resolves issues without getting too heated.  When you fight constructively you are not throwing accusations or saying things you don’t mean.  You are focused on the facts.  You set emotions aside and you work on the problem at hand, together.

Knowing how to fight right is essential to your relationship.  Do it wrong and this won’t last long.

Never Forget the Attraction

In the beginning you are all about each other.  You find new things to love everyday, but this phase, referred to as the honeymoon phase, won’t last.  After some time you may begin to take each other for granted.  You may begin to forget that initial attraction.

That is why it is important to keep the attraction alive.  Keep reminding yourself why you are with him and remind him why he is with you.  Do things to keep the spark in the relationship.

With these three things you should be able to nurture and grow your relationship.  Too often people lose sight of these important parts of a relationship and that is why relationships don’t last.  People forget that a relationship is like a plant and it needs tending so it doesn’t die.