A healthy, loving relationship is a wonderful thing —there’s much to be said about the psychological and even physical benefits of knowing that someone loves you. Yet, relationships are commitments, and any commitment will require some degree of sacrifice, whether that be a reassessment of your priorities, a reevaluation of your self-worth, or placing the needs of your partner before your own. The truth is that we owe it to our future partners to be fully prepared for a relationship before getting ourselves involved in one. We cannot make it another person’s responsibility to lift us up because we would be dragging them down, which is not what love is.   So, before you commit to a serious relationship, here are some essential bits [...]