What makes for a healthy relationship and how can you get there in yours?
Navigating romantic relationships is often tricky. How do we create a tight bond without losing ourselves in it? How do we address issues without adding a rift between you and your partner? These are certainly big questions that don’t have easy answers. With this blog post I am not trying to tell you how to live your life, instead I am trying to offer a few ideas that can empower you to get a step closer to the type of relationship you are hoping for.
1. Take care of yourself – you remain two distinct individuals
One common pitfall of relationships is that one or even both partners start losing their individuality in the relationship. Defining your self(-worth) only by your partner is not recommended. What do you do if you’re going through a rough patch or have a smaller conflict? Putting all of your (self-worth) eggs in one basket is a risky strategy. So instead, make sure you gain confidence and grow as a person outside of your relationship too.
Being in a relationship does not mean you have to do everything together. Especially, at the beginning you might want to be together a lot and that’s normal. In the same way it is normal that you will long to spend more time again with friends and hobbies that you’ve had even before the relationship started.
Similarly, it is normal to have differing opinions about topics. But it might not be possible to have differing opinions on major, often, value-based topics. So make sure that you and your partner align on these.
2. Have shared interests and hobbies
On the other hand, it is helpful to have activities and interests outside of your love for each other that you share. Having shared interests and hobbies will strengthen the foundation of your relationship and keep things interesting.
Do you already have a shared hobby or should you start experimenting to find something you enjoy doing together? Depending on how you met your partner you might not have shared interests yet. That is fine and happens often. I do however recommend spending time and some energy to find things you enjoy doing together as a couple. Whether that is shared exercise or an aquarelle course, or crossing off hikes from a shared bucket list, is completely up to you. Take some time together to figure out what activities you might want to explore together.
3. Fair distribution of household responsibilities
One of the most common ways in which dissatisfaction grows in relationships is because one or both partners feel that the mental and physical load of keeping the household running is distributed unfairly.
One way to tackle this topic before it becomes an issue is to have regular times during which such issues can be brought up. The book Fairplay by Eve Rodsky gives a very easy and even playful approach to this. Without going too deeply into it, she suggests that couples should have regular times to distribute household tasks fairly (which is different equally) and also address questions such as how each partner is able to have time to work on passion projects for themselves.
4. Have regular check-ins to handle admit and difficulties
Treat your home and your relationship like projects. How would you tackle the project of running a smooth household or a happy relationship? Both are long-term and ongoing. So having regular check-ins to determine the satisfaction and issues with the status quo will allow you to troubleshoot earlier than when things are already out of control and it might even be too late
The check-ins don’t have to be unpleasant. Make it a weekly or bi-weekly moment for you and your partner. Ask yourself what would help to make the admin meeting cosier and pleasant (e.g. connecting it with an order-in dinner and rounding the meeting up with something fun).
4. Consider couples counselling for persistent issues
Asking for help when you struggle to figure things out alone, is a strength, not a weakness! A lot of successful couples take advantage of couples counselling. It isn’t shameful or a sign that your relationship is dying. The bad reputation couples counselling has, mostly comes from couples seeking help too late and patriarchy making equitable change difficult.
A good couples counsellor will work with both partners and won’t prioritise one partner’s needs over the other. However, a good counsellor will also call out problematic behaviour, which can be difficult to accept. Many struggle with accepting feedback and dealing with it constructively, without feeling like it is a personal attack. But try to remember this, taking feedback and trying to understand it as an opportunity to improve and build a stronger relationship will make it a lot more likely that you will gain the benefits.
Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash
Margaretha Madoures 