Choose Your Partner Every Day: Bryan Reeves on Commitment

Reading This Beautiful Story Might Just Save Your Relationship. Choose Him or Her Everyday.

A couple holding each other close in a black-and-white studio portrait, a picture of the closeness that comes from choosing each other again and again.

"Choose him or her every day" is the idea at the heart of a short personal essay by Bryan Reeves that spread widely on social media in the mid-2010s. His point is simple: staying in a relationship is not the same as choosing it. You can share a home, a bed and a calendar with someone for years while quietly holding back the decision to be fully with them, and both people feel that gap.

This article explains what Reeves wrote and why it struck a nerve, what relationship research says about daily choice and attention, and how to turn the idea into something practical, including when choosing again is not the right answer.

Who Bryan Reeves is and what he wrote

Bryan Reeves is a former US Air Force captain who became a relationship coach, working with men, women and couples, and who has taught mindfulness to military veterans. He writes about love and masculinity on his own site and for outlets such as The Good Men Project.

In the essay, he looks back on a five-year relationship with a woman he describes as brilliant, funny and beautiful, someone he loved deeply. Early delight soon gave way to everyday friction. Neither of them, he admits, knew much about how to love well, and he began to wonder whether there was someone easier to be with. That question, repeated in his head month after month, slowly eroded his commitment. In his words: "Every day, for five years, I chose her a little less."

He did not leave. He simply stopped choosing. And he argues that this halfway state was the worst of both worlds: the relationship continued, but the person inside it no longer felt wanted.

Staying is not the same as choosing

The most useful part of Reeves's story is his description of a downward spiral. Because he was unsure, he paid more attention to what annoyed him about his partner: her anger, her insecurity, her demands. The more he focused on her worst traits, the more of them he noticed, and the more he answered with his own worst behaviour. That in turn gave him more reasons to hold back.

His partner, he believes, felt this clearly. She fought to be chosen, and grew angrier as she sensed she was not. Looking back, he reads much of that anger as fear of being abandoned, and he concludes that he did abandon her emotionally long before the relationship ended. He also acknowledges that she did not fully choose him either; it was a pattern they built together.

One line from the essay captures the trap many couples fall into: "You can't make someone choose you, even when they might love you." Pressure, criticism and pleading rarely produce commitment. What changes things is a decision made freely by each person.

Bryan Reeves' Reflection on Choosing a Relationship

Image: photographer Tom Mitchell, with models Magdalena Zaleska and Christopher John Millington.

What research says about daily choice

Reeves writes from experience, not from a laboratory, but his central idea lines up with well-known findings in relationship science.

Small moments matter. Psychologist John Gottman describes "bids for connection": any small attempt by one partner to get the other's attention, affection or support, from a comment about the news to a hand on the shoulder. In a long-term study of newlyweds, couples who were still married six years later had turned toward each other's bids about 86% of the time. Couples who had divorced averaged only 33%. Choosing someone, in practice, looks a lot like turning toward them in these ordinary moments.

What you focus on grows. Reeves noticed that dwelling on his partner's faults made them loom larger. Relationship researchers describe a similar effect: once partners start to read each other's actions through a negative lens, even neutral behaviour can feel like an attack. Deliberately noticing and naming what you appreciate is one of the simplest ways to interrupt that cycle.

Deciding beats drifting. Many couples slide into big steps, like moving in together, without ever making a clear decision. Commitment researchers have argued that explicit, mutual decisions tend to support stronger relationships than inertia does. Reeves's daily question is a small version of the same idea.

The daily question

Reeves offers one question to ask yourself if you are in a relationship: "Why am I choosing my partner today?"

The answer does not need to be grand. It might be a specific quality, a shared memory, or simply a quiet sense that you want to be with this person. On a distant or difficult day you may not find an answer at all, and that is normal. The point is to ask again tomorrow, and to notice if the answer keeps going missing.

A few ways to put the question into practice:

Name one thing you value about your partner each day, and say it out loud now and then.
Turn toward small bids. Look up from your phone, answer the comment, return the touch.
Act on the answer. If you choose someone because of their humour, make time to laugh together. If it is their kindness, thank them for it.
Talk about the low days without blame. "I've felt distant this week and I want to fix that" opens a door that criticism closes.
Notice your own part. Reeves's story is persuasive because he looks first at his own behaviour rather than his partner's.

When choosing again is not the answer

Reeves is clear that daily choosing is not an argument for staying at any cost. If, over a long stretch, you genuinely cannot find a reason to choose your partner and the relationship is full of stress, he suggests it may be kinder to let them go, so both of you have the chance to be wholeheartedly chosen by someone else.

Two further cautions are worth adding. First, choosing harder cannot fix every problem. Deep incompatibility, very different life goals or long-standing resentment usually need honest conversation and sometimes the help of a qualified couples therapist. Second, the idea does not apply to relationships involving abuse, threats or control. If you feel unsafe with a partner, your priority is your safety, and support services or a trusted professional can help you work out next steps.

Why the story resonates

The essay spread because it describes something many people recognise but rarely admit: being physically present in a relationship while emotionally keeping one foot out the door. It is uncomfortable to read because it is honest, and because the writer takes responsibility instead of blaming his former partner.

Its message is ultimately hopeful. Commitment is not only a promise made once at the start; it is a choice that can be renewed, deliberately, on ordinary days. Your partner deserves to feel chosen, and so do you.

Sources: Personal essay by Bryan Reeves (bryanreeves.com); The Good Men Project: Bryan Reeves author page and article; The Gottman Institute: Turn Toward Instead of Away. Previously shared via Educate Inspire Change.

More from the archive: