After a weekend trip, we were having a casual drink when the expectation came out that he was supposed to propose. Nobody had said it out loud before.
This article is about another unspoken assumption: that if a relationship is right, it shouldn't feel this hard.
Quick Answer
No. Love doesn't have to feel effortless to be real. The belief that it should is common, and it makes ordinary hard stretches look like proof of incompatibility. Couples who last have hard stretches too. They keep working at it and judge the relationship by whether it is heading somewhere they both want.
Key Facts
- Even happy long-term couples have friction and hard periods. Gottman's research found that 69% of the problems in a relationship are perpetual, meaning they never fully go away. What differs is how couples handle them.
- The "effort means it's wrong" belief resembles what researchers call a destiny belief: the conviction that partners are either meant for each other or not. In a 1998 study of destiny and growth beliefs, people with stronger destiny beliefs were more likely to cope with relationship stress by avoiding it. People with growth beliefs (the view that relationships are cultivated through effort) were more likely to use coping strategies that maintain the relationship.
- The easy feeling of early love fades. A review of research on long-term couples found that romantic love can last in long-term marriages, without the obsessive quality of early love.
- Couples don't follow one path. A four-year study of 464 newlywed spouses found five distinct satisfaction trajectories, and communication behaviors measured early in marriage helped tell them apart. That makes communication something couples can practice.
- This article is about ordinary difficulty. If you are afraid of your partner, or there is abuse or control, a professional or a crisis line is the right place to start (see the note near the end).
Where does the "love should be easy" myth come from?
Films, novels and the relationships we grew up around mostly show the early phase of love: the falling in, the discovery, the feeling that the other person completes you without effort.
That early phase changes over time. A scientific review found that in long-term marriages the obsessive quality of early love fades, while romantic love itself can last.
What comes after is the start of the actual relationship (we wrote about how couples keep growing together in the self-expansion effect). If the early phase is the only picture of love you have, the harder part that follows can look like proof that something has gone wrong.
What does the myth do to good relationships?
Normal difficulties set the belief off. Once it has you reading them as signs of incompatibility, it tends to create the problem it thinks it is diagnosing.
You have a hard week. The effort needed to repair it feels like more work than a relationship "should" require. You start to wonder. You half-withdraw. Your partner notices and half-withdraws in return. Now there's distance that wasn't there before. The belief created it.
It feeds itself. If you believe effort signals a problem, you pull back, the pulling back creates real distance, and the distance looks like confirmation that something is wrong. (We wrote about how that quiet distance builds in when couples drift apart.)
Try it: next time it feels hard and you catch yourself asking "should it be this difficult?", name the belief under the question. It might be "this feels hard, so something may be wrong with us." Try "this feels hard, and we may be at the part where people build something" instead.
What does the research say love actually looks like?
Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis make a point in their book that hit us both when we first read it: you can be provably loved and still not feel loved. How loved you feel depends on specific conditions, and most of them need active effort from both people. (We reviewed the book in How to Feel Loved: 5 Mindsets From the Research.)
Gottman's research points the same way. Couples who stay happy still have conflict. What they have more of is small positive moments, curiosity about each other, and quick repair when something goes wrong. In conflict, stable couples showed about five positive interactions for every negative one, a ratio Gottman's site still cites as of October 2026. Couples have to do all of this on purpose.
Couples who "make it look easy" may not have it easier than you. Their effort often looks invisible because the habits are well practiced.
How do you tell hard and growing from hard and stuck?
The useful question is "are we moving in a direction we both want?"
A relationship can be hard and growing, or easy and stagnating, so difficulty says little about whether it's working. Direction says more.
If the effort is taking you somewhere (you're learning each other, repairing faster, trusting more over time), the difficulty is productive. Small, regular upkeep is how that happens, which is the idea behind proactive relationship maintenance. If you're applying effort in a closed loop, covering the same ground without movement, the effort itself may need to change.
That's a different diagnosis from "this must not be the right relationship."
It was our own version of this. For several months, a bigger argument about whether we should marry, and how, sat under the surface. He doesn't like public displays of affection or being the center of attention, and she wanted exactly that. The assumption was never spoken about, and it only came up because she finally asked why he never proposed. He needed to do some work himself to understand what was stopping him.
We talked it through with a relationship therapist, who walked through some family issues. Friends who were already married helped him understand what the issue was. With the Growing Us coach, it was really good to reflect and to have a place to voice what was sitting deeper. It unearthed some deeper commitment issues that he has now set aside and worked through. He proposed, and it will be a small ceremony, which kind of solves for him being shy and not liking being the center of attention.
Try it: name one assumption you've never said out loud to your partner, and ask whether they share it. Ours only came up when she asked why he never proposed.
When does effort really mean something is wrong?
Some relationships don't get better with effort. The difficulty accumulates instead of resolving. The same fights happen in year seven that happened in year one, with no movement (see how to stop repeating the same argument). Or one person's fundamental needs are structurally incompatible with the other's.
In those cases effort doesn't fix it. It only postpones the moment you admit it.
The test is whether the work is getting you anywhere. Are you understanding each other more? Are repairs happening faster? Is the relationship, however slowly, becoming more of what you both want? If the answers are yes, the effort is working, and the myth is what makes it feel like evidence against you. If they're no, and the lack of movement has lasted well beyond a hard season, you need a different conversation, and an honest one.
One limit has nothing to do with effort. If you are afraid of your partner, or there is abuse or control, working harder at the relationship is not the answer. Reach out for support first. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. Elsewhere, local domestic violence services can help. This article is about ordinary difficulty, not danger.
FAQ
Is it normal to have to work at love this much?
Yes. The appearance of ease in other people's relationships is usually either the early phase or habits so well established they look automatic. Neither means the relationship didn't take building.
We fight a lot. Does that mean we're incompatible?
How you handle conflict matters more than how often it happens. Gottman research consistently finds that couples with stable, happy long-term relationships have conflict too. They keep a positive emotional climate and repair after a fight instead of letting it pile up. If your fights end in repair, frequency is less of a worry. A standing weekly check-in is one way to build that repair habit.
How do you know when effort is productive vs. when you should walk away?
Ask whether things are getting better, getting worse or staying the same over several months rather than one hard week. Growth feels slow but points somewhere. Incompatibility tends to feel circular: the same ground, no movement. If you're unsure, talk to a therapist, not only to friends who love you. If safety is the worry, start with the note above.
My partner believes the "it should be easy" myth. How do I talk to them about it?
Arguing with the belief directly tends to get you defensiveness. Ask what a "right relationship" looks like day to day for them. Most people's picture includes effort once they describe it. From the outside, the work doesn't look like work.
Real love can feel hard and still be going somewhere. Saying the unspoken thing out loud is a good place to start.
To see where you stand, try the free Pulse Check. It takes five minutes and names your patterns. The Growing Us coach can help from there.