Turns out predicting which college freshman relationships end versus thrive is quiet easy.

All it takes is five questions. Five questions I wish I had known before having four partnerships at Cornell University. I got them from Dr. Keith Witt's book, Loving Completely. In it, he summarizes his insights from 53+ years of integral psychotherapy on the patterns of great relationships.

What makes Witt's book incredible is its holism and insightfulness. In integral thinking, everyone's right, just not all the time. These questions draw from psychology, sociology, biology, and so much more.

It's inspired me to make my next (and hopefully last) partnership the best one yet. And you to! If you're in a college relationship, this will help you fix the challenges you're facing (or realize you need to leave).

And if you're seeking a partner, this will give you a much better idea of what you should be looking for. That's more than I had going in. My dating education consisted of watching cows in upstate New York choose each other based on proximity.

Question 1: Is There Erotic Polarity Between Me And This Person?

My first girlfriend, Lila, was very feminine. In contrast, I was as masculine as a can of gasoline poured over steak for seasoning.

She sent texts every hour, planned adventures, got me silly gifts like protein cookies. And I resisted the closeness, diving deeper into content creation, schoolwork, and the gym.

The end of that relationship made me more feminine. I hoped it would make things more harmonic.

Since then, I've had more masculine partners. One of those was Ruby. Her masculine energy was what drew me in: confidence, agency, a drive to push her influence onto the world. The problem was she couldn't receive others' energy well.

Ironically, I became Lila in my first relationship, constantly trying to come closer. And Ruby became me, pulling further and further away.

I didn’t understand. I push one polarity: it doesn’t work. I push another, it doesn’t work. Thankfully, Loving Completely had answers.

A huge part of attraction comes from the harmony between the masculine and feminine polarities of us and our partner. Harmony doesn’t mean some artificial 50/50 balance. It means a healthy appreciation and difference between partners. Harmony is harmed from too much similarity. But it’s also harmed by too much difference, like in my partnerships.

Don't mistake masculine drives as only for men and feminine as only for women. We're biologically and socially wired to trend toward the masculine as men and feminine as women, but the exceptions are enormous.

The masculine polarity values transcendence, autonomy, agency, doing, and order. The feminine polarity values integration, communion, connection, being, and chaos. Neither is superior. They're complementary forces, like peanut butter and banana. As I reflected for myself the polarity harmony I'd like, this is what I came up with. Hopefully it helps you find your own harmony.

I'm primarily masculine as an individual, but feminine in relationships.

I have a strong transcendent doing drive pulling me toward my purpose of making a more conscious college system. I'm agentic, preferring to be self-reliant and principle driven. My productivity has become more balanced as I've grown, but I still don't feel it's a good day unless I've made something to further my purpose.

I prefer order over chaos, organizing my physical and digital world neatly. Routine and habits over empty calendar wilderness. I enjoy being a grounding pole for others. People can organize themselves around me and get things moving. Sexually, I lean masculine too: I open up the energy in my partner rather than putting the full weight of leadership on them.

Relationally, though, I trend toward the feminine side.

There's a deep spiritual well in me that is pulled toward communing with another person's essence, especially a romantic partner. I seek merging with someone else's being so deeply that we exchange colors on each other's canvas. We take each others love and through it, see deeper into ourselves, others, and the world.

I want to help people transcend. That's why I love coaching, mentoring, and teaching so much. I love receiving energy. Asking questions and listening are the avocado to my toast.

Questions To Reflect On:

• Where do you actually live on the masculine-feminine spectrum, not where you perform? Does that shift between your individual life and your relationships?
• Think about your current or most recent partner. Where did your polarities harmonize, and where did they clash? Was the friction generative or grinding?
• When attraction fades in a relationship, is it possible the polarity shifted without either person noticing?

Question 2: Does This Person Maintain Their Physical And Psychological Health?

Health is an infinitely complex topic. And yet, ever since I first heard one particular definition of it, I haven't found a better one.

True health is someone who takes 100 percent responsibility for everything they experience and do.

Relationships require change to work. If you aren't willing to make the shifts necessary to keep the relationship going, the relationship won't go anywhere. Someone in relative health is doomed to terrible health down the road if they come toward life as a victim.

Inside that mindset of radical responsibility, there are two main aspects to becoming radically healthy in your relationships: building great health habits and becoming shadow savvy.

Building Great Health Habits

Most students into self-improvement think of habits as external routines: eating well, skin care, checking your finances each month. But health habits go much deeper. They fit into physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual areas.

I particularly want to emphasize the internal habits inside each area. A relational habit of responding to your partner's bids for attention the majority of the time. A journaling habit of reflecting on strong emotions when they arise. Accepting negative thoughts non-judgmentally and compassionately so you can return to your optimal zone.

These are the hidden habits that carry just as much, if not more, influence on your health than the ones everyone can see from the outside. They're the ones that shape our identity.

Here's what nobody tells you about dating in college: we screen for the visible habits and ignore the invisible ones. We notice if someone works out or keeps their room clean. We don't notice whether they can sit with discomfort without reaching for a distraction, or whether they can admit they're wrong before the argument becomes a war. The invisible habits are the foundation. Without them, the visible ones are just furniture arranged on a cracking floor.

Becoming Shadow Savvy

The second piece is being shadow savvy.

As I talk about in my shadow journaling article, the shadow is made of parts of our self we've attached to through addiction or allergy, often without realizing it. A shadow addiction means we're so fused with a part of ourselves we can't see how it's running the show. Think about someone who stays constantly stimulated, never letting a single second of silence exist.

A shadow allergy is the opposite: we're so avoidant of something the avoidance itself starts shaping our choices. Like me refusing "unhealthy" foods at all costs to maintain shredded body fat as a Cornell Freshman.

Shadow savviness involves not only building awareness of our shadows, but befriending them. When met with radiance, shadows become light.

When I reflect on my past relationships, the health gaps become obvious. Lila didn't have great physical or mental habits, while I suffered from poor emotional and relational ones. I didn't feel I could connect with her over physical endeavors and philosophical discussion was met with indifference.

Ruby had poor health habits across the board, and yet she made up for it in so many other ways I didn't notice the faults until it was too late. She knew of her shadows. She just didn't have the savviness to navigate them.

In the future, I want to screen not just for obvious red flags (murder, for instance, remains a dealbreaker) but for the subtler patterns too. Because the subtle ones are what erode a relationship slowly over time.

Questions To Reflect On:

• What invisible habits do you carry into your relationships? Not the ones people can see, but the ones that shape how you respond when things get uncomfortable.
• What shadow are you currently addicted to or allergic to that might be quietly steering your relationship choices?
• If your partner took 100 percent responsibility for their health, what would actually change? Now ask the same question about yourself.

Question 3: In Conflict, Would This Person Do What It Takes To Get Back To Love?

To this day, there's only been one time I've truly lost my rooting in a romantic conflict.

It was with Ruby, my last partner. She was polyamorous, and despite reservations, I loved her enough to give it a try. After repeated conversations about my dissatisfaction with the relationship (lack of quality time, poor listening, not feeling like a priority), we sat down one night to talk it out. An hour passed. We didn't make much ground. Tired and emotionally spent, I began to stand up.

Then she asked: "Is it okay if I begin dating my friend Jack?"

I wish I could say I rooted in love to respond. All I could think was about how I just had an hour long conversation about how hard the relationship was right now and she wanted to start something else. All the shadows underlying that relationship stormed up in rage. You'll never find someone who loves you as much as you love them. She's not right for you. You'll always be disappointed.

For the next ten minutes we spoke only through our shadows. No real conversation was had. Just pointless anger ricocheting off the walls. Looking back, this was the interaction which spelled the end of the relationship.

Most students don't resolve conflict with their partners. They fight with their shadows, then mistake it for a real conversation.

To avoid this, we must befriend those shadows beforehand so they don't smog the conversation when it matters most. I talk a lot more about how to befriend them in my shadow journaling article.

In John Gottman's research, he shows there are four particularly strong shadows (he calls them horseman) which destroy productive conflict resolution. Embody any one of them for too long, and the relationship is likely doomed.

Stonewalling. Contempt. Defensiveness. Criticism.

Stonewalling builds a wall. Contempt spits over it. Defensiveness pretends the wall isn't there. Criticism blames the other person for building it.

What makes these so dangerous is they feel productive in the moment. Criticism feels like honesty. Defensiveness feels like standing up for yourself. Contempt feels like moral clarity. Stonewalling feels like self-preservation. They all wear the costume of something reasonable while slowly poisoning the water supply of trust.

How do we screen for these in our partner? Well, have a conflict. In some ways, it's actually good to have conflict at the start of a relationship. It lets you get a handle on how you deal with hard things together. Much better to learn early than ride the romantic infatuation train for a year only to realize you're partnered with a demon spawn.

Questions To Reflect On:

• Think about your last real conflict with a partner or close friend. Were you talking to them, or were you fighting your shadows?
• Which of Gottman's four horsemen do you default to under stress: stonewalling, contempt, defensiveness, or criticism? Which one does your partner reach for?
• After a fight, who walks back toward love first? Is it always the same person?

Question 4: Would This Person Show Up As A Parent Or Family Member?

You might be thinking: why is parenting showing up in an article about college relationships?

No, I'm not suggesting the fourth question is to have kids so you can navigate your first year major decision crisis with a toddler on your hip. What I'm suggesting is you analyze your partner for whether they embody the principles of what makes a great parent or family member.

If someone can't show up for their family when it's appropriate, they very likely won't show up for you some time when you really need them.

This is something I wish I had appreciated more with Ruby. She tried to make her family work, which I admired. But in the process, she left her own needs scattered across the floor. I watched this with particular discomfort at her cousin's wedding, where she spent the entire day putting out family conflict fires while never grabbing a bite to eat. She put her body into such a state of disarray that she made herself sick over the next few days. Her care was real. But care without boundaries isn't true love.

I watched the opposite with my second girlfriend, Reena, who never spoke of her father. He was a high positioned U.S. army general, which I suspect doesn't exactly foster warm dinner table vulnerability.

One of the largest fields of psychology, attachment research, has dedicated itself to understanding how these family dynamics shape the ways people navigate relationships for the rest of their lives. The patterns we learn from our earliest caregivers don't vanish when we move into a dorm room. They just get dressed up in new contexts: the way your partner handles your bad day, the way they respond when you need something inconvenient, the way they act when they hold power over someone who can't push back.

We carry our families into every room we enter. The question is whether we carry them consciously, understanding their weight and choosing how to set them down, or unconsciously, letting old patterns steer from the backseat while we pretend we're driving.

It's also worth asking how your partner treats people when they're in positions of power. With service workers. Younger siblings. Other people's children. The barista who got the order wrong. How they treat those people can be enormously informative about how they'll treat you once the infatuation wears off and you're both standing in the kitchen arguing about dishes.

Question To Reflect On:

• How does your partner treat people who can't do anything for them? Service workers, younger siblings, strangers having a bad day.
• What patterns from your family do you carry into your relationships without realizing it? Which ones serve you, and which ones are driving from the backseat?
• Does your partner show up for their family in a way that nourishes them, or in a way that empties them?

Question 5: Does This Person Have Deep Purpose, While Recognizing And Admiring What Is Deeply Meaningful To Me?

One of the things that made my first partnership with Lila so difficult is she didn't have a deep enough soul's purpose for me.

For her, it was all about relationships. She would regularly have calls with family or friends that lasted three or more hours. That's a purpose I appreciate much more now. But at the time, her relational orientation made my career driven purpose feel like it was speaking a different language. I didn't respect her relationship oriented purpose enough. And I didn't feel she respected my career driven one.

I remember one time in particular trying to talk with her about my fascination with gamification during a car ride. The trees were blurring past, I was mid-sentence about game mechanics and human motivation, genuinely excited. She said, "That sounds pretty cool, let me tell you what crazy thing my friend did yesterday."

It wasn't malicious. But it stung in a way I couldn't articulate at the time. My excitement hit the windshield and slid off.

The irony is, her relational purpose was beautiful. She was wired to tend to the people around her with a warmth I genuinely admired. The problem wasn't her purpose. It was that neither of us knew how to bridge the gap between hers and mine. Two people can each have something meaningful and still not know how to let those meanings touch.

If your partner doesn't have a purpose of their own, they will turn the relationship into their main way of finding meaning.

Like it did with Lila and me, this puts tremendous weight on the partner who isn't using the relationship as their primary source of purpose. The relationship becomes a cup that one person keeps drinking from and the other keeps trying to fill. What would happen if the relationship ended? You'd lose your primary way of making meaning.

That's why it's essential we find ways to connect with our partner over each other's purposes. Converse with them. Engage in their meaningful stories. Help them accomplish their purpose. If you're truly in partnership, their wins become your wins.

With Ruby, I would regularly share my articles, videos, and work I was doing at Octalysis. I remember one day she called me after reading a draft of my memoir and said, "Aidan, I feel 20% closer to you now than before." It brought tears to my eyes. Even with everything else that happened in that relationship, she really tried to connect with me through my writing. That single moment was worth more than a hundred dates.

Questions To Reflect On:

• Does your partner have something that lights them up outside of your relationship? Do you?
• When you share what's meaningful to you, does your partner lean in or redirect? When they share theirs, do you?
• If this relationship ended tomorrow, would you still have a foundation of meaning to stand on?

Loving Completely

Imagine a world where each and every person loved each and every person completely.

What would university look like? What would politics feel like? What would the planet smell like?

If there's a utopia, this is the closest we'll get. But it won't come easy. It requires navigating all five questions for yourself first: understanding your polarity, building genuine health, learning to fight your way back to love, showing up like family, and connecting through purpose.

None of these questions are pass/fail. They're invitations to look honestly at what we bring to our relationships, not just what we demand from them. The relationship we have with another person can only be as deep as the relationship we have with ourselves. Every external challenge is rooted in an internal one.

I'm still looking for that special someone here in The Netherlands. And whether you're seeking, or looking to make a current college relationship better, keep these five questions close to your chest.

If you found this post interesting you would love my free College Freshman Cosmic Journaling Kit (CJK). ✨📚

It's a gamified journaling system that helps you grow your emotional intelligence, self-understanding, and purpose with over 1,000+ journaling questions in just 15 minutes a day.