1. Commit. If you're in love, prove it by putting effort into the relationship and working hard to make it work. Communicate openly with your partner about your goals for the relationship and where you see it going. If you're only interested in a short-term fling, be honest. If you've got an eye toward serious long-term love, be honest. There's nothing wrong with either kind of love, but you need to make sure that your partner is equally committed to the same version of love that you are.
Commit to the person and to the relationship. It’s easy when two people have been together for awhile and you’ve become very trusting to just get very comfortable with each other. Maybe you don’t go out on dates anymore or maybe you don’t dress up nice for each other sometimes. But you should at least do these things occasionally, or eventually someone will feel like they’re no longer worth the effort.
2. Learn lessons and apply them to your relationships. Yes, bad things will happen in your relationships. You’ll say the wrong thing, or they’ll hurt your feelings. It happens. The important part, when anything goes wrong (even if it’s just problems in your life), is to learn your lessons and just keep moving forward. Try to make the most of any negative situation, turning it into something positive by gaining and growing from the experience. Honestly try to adopt your significant other's POV in any argument that gets fairly serious -- do try to be compassionate and understand where they're coming from.[3]
If you're in the wrong, apologize and own up to your mistake. Good relationships air out the grievances and clear the air. Bad relationships hide the negativity and let it fester into serious problems. If you're in love, talk about your problems.
3. Work constantly to make yourself and those you love better. A good, loving relationship is one where you constantly challenge each other to be better people. Help the other person to achieve their dreams and goals because you believe they deserve it. Improve yourself and work for your dreams so that you can be the person you feel they deserve. We should be better people because of the relationships that we have, and this is the way to do it.
4. Eliminate jealousy. This is one of the unhealthiest things to have in a relationship, as it can break down trust and respect, and create barriers. For some people, this can be the most challenging part of relationships. Jealousy is a tough thing to break, but you can do it. The most important thing to understand is that jealousy issues almost always come from within, from the jealous person’s own issues, so those need to be worked through first. This is a place where those communication skills come in handy. This is, of course, assuming one person in the relationship is running around blatantly cheating on the other. In which case, they don’t really love the person they’re hurting, now do they?
5. Try to see issues from all sides. We hate to be wrong. Everyone does. But the thing about everyone thinking they’re right is that someone HAS to be wrong. If we disagree on an issue, we’re bound to be wrong on at least part of the issue. You’ll have much stronger relationships if you learn to talk things out with the other person, see their point of view, and find somewhere in the middle where you can meet and agree. If you're having trouble agreeing on how you feel about something or someone, try to stick first with the facts -- some facts maybe have been omitted due to our preferences which really ought to be considered, in all fairness.
6. Be partners in life. The whole point of going through life with people you love is so that you can tackle life’s challenges together. Work together to find solutions, solve problems, and comfort each other when times get tough. We can’t solve everything on our own, we can’t know everything there is to know...but a whole bunch of people getting together out of love can solve just about any problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment