If you have heard the clichés a million times, why are you dismissing them?
"Communication is que" is absolutely the "real" stuff. Once the first flush of 'being in love' and the 'lust where you want to rip each others clothes off' has calmed down, a couples ability to communicate both honestly, and respectively, with each other, can be the difference between an on going successful partnership, and one that starts to fray at the seams.
Being able to communicate effectively and still lovingly with each other, needs to be maintained throughout the whole of the relationship. A knowledge of one of the biggest disrupters of any type of relationship, is also paramount in helping to keep an even keel within relationships. I am referring to our egos. We primarily need to acknowledge and understand our own ego's here. Once we realise that when we feel hurt in almost any realationship - whether it is between a parent and a child, romantic partners, a works partnership, or even good friends (and no, my use of dashes does not mean I am an AI writing this, if necessary I will tick how many boxes have American traffic lights in them to prove it 🤭) - it is almost always because of our egos.
However, I am not saying that we shouldn't have egos, particularly in this day and age, because if we were able to surpress our egos until they practically disappear, we would, in many cases be opening ourselves up to being used and manipulated by all manners of characters. I would love to be able say that of course that doesn't apply to the parent and child scenario, but you only have to read a few pages of Mumsnet to have that notion thoroughly destroyed. So we very much need to hold on to our egos, but I also believe that we need to recognise that we have one, and realise - probably through much soul serching, and maybe even through personal research (the second of which I admit to not having done so for myself) - that we can, and some of us quite frequently do, hold our egos in too high an esteem.
When we let our egos be our main guide through life, they can make us view many types of transactions, and relationships, from a far too heavily weighted in our own favour, viewpoint. If, in a romantic partnership, we feel safe enough to commit to sharing our lives with another human being - whether that is moving in together, or actually getting married before living together - then we need to already be communicating successfully, and without our egos being at the forefront of our relationship. We need to be able to trust that our partner is the safest, and most trustworthy person that we can share our ego with, and, of course, that must work vice versa as well.
Unfortunately @BeforeTheRingBlinds,
as great as it would be to be in that position with our partners, in reality, the chance of any of us being able to be that certain of our chosen partner before having spent almost a lifetime together, is quite remote. I first got married as a teenager, and I certainly had, what we used to call 'rose coloured spectacles' on. He was my first serious partner, and I was his, and no, we didn't have to get married, we didn't have our first child for almost another 4 years. I was extremely lucky for almost a decade, as he was absolutely lovely, a good husband, and an even better dad, and also very intelligent, with a great career as well. That was until the aliens came down from their spaceship and changed him. I hadn't even realised that had happened until the night he told me that he was leaving me for his colleague.
His timing was atrocious, but I can't explain why it was worse than most other times would have been, because even after all these years later, the situation is still very outing, and my broadcasting it could hurt too many people, including him and the colleague he left me for.
Anyway, I think that my ego was a late starter, as it still didn't really start to kick in for several months after he left. Some years later I went into my second marriage with my ego at last playing a part, but it has taken nearly 30 odd years for the consciousness and importance of my ego to really wake-up. So, I now realise, that at least for me, that I shouldn't let my ego get in the way of worthwhile relationships - if someone important to me forgot my birthday, or didn't invite me, as their soon to be mother-in-law, to their hen do, then so what, it's not worth ruining my relationship with my potential daughter-in-law, or even more importantly, with my son. However, if my romantic partner of many years started to treat my important birthdays etc as if they didn't really happen, but still expected me to treat theirs as very important, then that would be when my ego should absolutely let me know that I mustn't let them get away with treating me like that! You might recognise my last two examples as having come from either the newspapers, or Mumsnet itself.
Gosh, I think it is very likely that you gave up reading this ages ago OP, and I couldn't blame you, as I have a cramp in my left hand and wrist - from squeezing my phone too tight - and my eyes are gritty, but worst of all my brain has gone so fuzzy that I don't even know if any of this makes any sense! I suppose that all I really should have said when I started this reply was, "OP, be aware of your and your future partner's ego, keep yours in-check, but don't forget it's worth, and remind him if his gets out of reasonable control. The only way either of you can be aware of those necessities, is to keep communicating together as one of both of yours best assets.
Sorry, I am far too tired to check whether this makes any sort of sense, is mainly grammatically correct, and that there aren't too many spelling mistakes 😵💫🤗