I always find it amazing that love relationships ever come to fruition and sustain themselves for an extended period of time. Relationships seem so complicated, particularly those of the romantic, “I’m looking for my soulmate” variety. There are so many aspects of a relationship that determine whether it works or not. And how do we know when a relationship is even healthy, much less sustainable, for us?

As I have explored the deepest reaches of the human psyche through my decades-long career, I have catalogued the dimensions that I believed contribute to the quality of a romantic relationship. I have ultimately landed on eight dimensions that have provided me with a taxonomy for understanding the complexities of relationships (I’ll introduce them shortly).

But for a long time, I struggled with finding a framework that would describe those dimensions in a way that was both intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant. Only recently did I find that structure when I alit on the term, alignment, that was residing in a dark corner of my mind.

In the context of relationships, alignment can be broadly conceptualized as the degree to which two people are similar or in agreement as opposed to dissimilar or in disagreement. How aligned two people are along essential dimensions will determine the health and longevity of a relationship.

The nine “alignments” that I have identified are: intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, values, avocations, chemistry, readiness, and timing. Let’s explore each of them in detail.

Intellectual

This alignment refers to how intelligent you want your partner to be. This dimension can be a proxy for educational level, or it might reflect “street smarts” or common sense. For some people, high intelligence may be very important to, for example, satisfy their needs for intellectually stimulating conversation about a wide range of topics that might include philosophy, the sciences, politics, psychology, world events and many others. For others, intelligence may be less important than some of the other alignments.

Emotional

Emotional alignment may be the most important, yet complicated, alignments. There are two aspects of emotions that play a role in alignment. First, how emotionally accessible is your prospective partner. For truly healthy relationships, emotional openness and vulnerability are essential for meeting each other’s needs, feeling loved, communicating effectively, and resolving conflict in amicable ways. At the same time, alignment rather than absolute emotionality may be more important. For example, if you are emotionally defended, you will not likely align with someone who is emotionally open. On the contrary, you will actually feel more aligned with someone who is similarly defended. Though this alignment of emotional defendedness may not lead to the healthiest relationship (because neither of you will be able to fully “go there”), it will more likely meet your immediate emotional needs of keeping some distance between you and your prospective partner.

Physical

There are two aspects of the physical dimension that determine your alignment. First, if sex is important to you in a relationship, then physical attraction is necessary. Whatever internal standard of what you find attractive in a partner (in other words, whatever turns you on!), whether height, weight, body, type, face, what-have-you, must be met for there to be sexual interest. Of course, your physical attraction to another person can be affected by intellect (perhaps you’re a sapiosexual), emotional (if you feel their love), and chemistry (you just feel this deep connection).

Second, physical alignment can refer to how critical a physically healthy and active lifestyle is to you. This dimension can be thought of as a sub-dimension of avocations (to be discussed below). Being able to share physical activities—sports, hiking, yoga, Pilates, the list goes on—may be of great importance to you.

Values

Values are the foundation of everything we do in our lives. They act as the signposts that direct and guide us on our life’s journey. Values specify what is important and what we prioritize in our lives. Values dictate how we spend our time, energy, and money (three of our most essential resources). Given the essential role that values play in our lives, it’s not surprising that they are also crucial to the formation and maintenance of relationships.

Values can touch on every aspect of your life. They can include educational and career choices, avocations, religious and political beliefs, the types of relationships you have, where you commit your charitable efforts, your relationship to money, how you believe people should be treated, the list goes on.

Values are so deeply held that they become inextricably entwined with our self-identities. Because of this deep connection between our values and the kind of person we perceive ourselves to be, value alignment seems truly fundamental to the partners we choose. It is rare, at least in my experience, to find two people in a healthy relationship with vastly different, and conflicting, value systems.

Spiritual

Spiritual alignment is often central to a healthy relationship because spirituality frequently informs much of who we are, what we value and believe, and how we view and engage with the world. I use the term “spirituality” in a broad sense. It may indicate a strong belief in a  monotheistic God espoused by traditional religions. Or it may refer to a personal journey to find meaning and purpose in life outside of ourselves. In either case, people who value spirituality often need someone who is aligned with them spiritually in to feel a deep connection.

Avocations

The nature of a committed, long-term relationship is that we spend most of our daily time for a significant part of our lifespan with our partner. This fact, by definition, requires that this time needs to be filled with something, usually activities in which both can participate and share experiences, thus strengthening their connection.

Times have certainly changed in recent generations about the activities that partners do together. In previous generations, couples led much more separate avocational lives. Men did “men” activities with their male friends and women followed suit with their female friends. In recent decades though, the relationship between partners has become more encompassing, where they are seen as best friends who share their avocations. This shift in loving relationships has resulted in partners spending most of their free time together sharing and enjoying their aligned activities, thus making avocation alignment far important for healthy relationships.

Chemistry

This alignment may be the most elusive because it can’t be rationally understood or explained; rather, it’s just something we feel. I have often described it as a balance between comfort and excitement. You feel safe and secure with your partner, yet also passionate and stimulated. What aligns chemistry is that both people feel the chemistry at the same level of intensity.

Due to its elusive nature, knowing where chemistry comes from is often a mystery. At the same time, it’s not unreasonable to posit that chemical alignment could be the culmination of alignment in the previous five dimensions that influence a relationship.

Readiness

Too often, I have seen burgeoning relationships with what appeared to be considerable alignment go off the rails because one or both of the people weren’t ready based on where they were in their life’s journey. Readiness for a healthy relationship can involve having explored and let go of emotional baggage that prevents them from being capable of being a part of a nourishing relationship.

Unfortunately, emotional baggage is a part of the human condition that can interfere with the establishment of a nurturing relationship. Common baggage that afflicts many of us can include not feeling worthy of love, fear of rejection, need to please, and need for control, any of which can cause us to be attracted to people who aren’t healthy for us or that will set up the relationship for failure.

Readiness alignment can be a real challenge because it requires that you and your prospective partner to individually (and sometimes collectively) commit time and energy to putting the past behind the two of you. This process involves acting on your world (and those in it) based on who you are rather than who you once were.

Timing

Despite the internal alignment that may exist between two people, outside forces may derail the potential that may exist for a nourishing relationship. Geography, career, marriage status, the presence of children or elderly parents, and physical health are just a few of the factors that, if not aligned, can make the previous seven alignments moot.

Alignments are Dynamic

One important clarification: These dimensions aren’t dichotomous ; in other words, they are not “Do they have them or not?” Instead, you should consider each dimension as lying along a continuum in which they might have varying degrees of alignment. Where on the continuum they might lie depends on how important each dimension is to you and how you prioritize any specific alignment in the “meta alignment” of your overall feelings for and relationship with a person.

Alignments can also change in a relationship. Alignments can deepen as people evolve in any or all of the eight dimensions I discussed above. These stronger alignments can result in a relationship growing deeper and more resilient that can stand the test of time. Conversely, alignments can also weaken or disappear completely as people change in ways that aren’t, well, aligned with their partner. The end result of which will be either the two people inhabiting a misaligned relationship or that relationship ending because there are simply not enough alignments to keep the relationship intact.