The 3 biggest gifts we can give someone are...

What do you think the three most precious things we can give someone are?

If things like a whole lot of cash, a fancy car, or jewelry come to mind, you're not even close. The things I'm alluding to are intangible virtues that go far deeper.

The three biggest gifts we can provide are our love, our trust, and our time.

Love: This one is a no-brainer. Human beings seek others' love from the moment they're born. As adults, we turn to our partners, relatives, friends, and even our coworkers for love and support. If we can say that we truly love someone, it means they occupy a special place in our hearts, and we'd be willing to do virtually anything to make them happy.

Trust: It can be difficult for us to trust people. After all, once someone breaks our trust, not only are we reluctant to trust that particular individual again, we make it harder for other people to earn it. To trust someone is to become vulnerable. Essentially, you're giving that person the power to let you down, only you hope they'll never do it. Without trust, a relationship or friendship cannot survive.

Time: While restoring trust can be a challenge, there's absolutely no way to recoup time that has passed. Once it's gone, you'll never get it back. That's why the argument can be made that time is, in fact, the most precious gift you can give another person. It's our way of showing that we can be doing a multitude of other things with our time, but we've chosen to carve out some of it for someone because they mean so much to us.

Notice that a key reason many relationships fail is because one or both partners feel unloved, they don't trust the other due to lies or other missteps, or they feel their partner isn't investing sufficient time to make it work.

If someone in the relationship feels one or more of these are indeed lacking, they should address it sooner than later. Unfortunately, failing to do so can lead to negative outcomes that can set the relationship on the path to ruin, like cheating and drinking.

If two people are wholly committed to saving the relationship, open communication and compassion are essential. Every relationship hits a rough patch occasionally, but there's no reason to believe that the relationship -- and the two of you individually -- can't emerge stronger than before.

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