In honor of Valentine’s Day, Dan and I have decided to co-write this week’s blog about our strategies for a great relationship. It seems like everywhere you look there’s an article or news segment about high divorce rates, cheating spouses and generally unhappy couples. We are here to tell you that building a successful relationship is not impossible! Even in today’s fast paced world, we find that through honest communication and a few other strategies, it can be easy to maintain a happy home life. Remember that your spouse or significant other should be your partner, you’re in this together and you need to work together to make your marriage last. Read on to discover a few of the things we feel has made our relationship one of the success stories.
Love and marriage…
So when you start to look around, you’ll quickly discover that the statistics for a successful marriage are grim and the stories of breakups and divorce are sometimes all we hear. But rather than focus on what’s going wrong let’s think about all the good things that help make marriages work and help make couples stay together. In our house, one of our main mantras is: focus on the positives and don’t worry about the things you cannot control. This mantra couldn’t be any more important when talking about relationships.
Below is a list of key ingredients we think can help lead to to a successful marriage:
LOVE: It’s the glue that holds everything together and can give you the strength to get through anything. With love comes patience, forgiveness, acceptance, support, and guidance. Solid relationships aren’t about keeping score. It’s about balancing one another, loving one another, and picking each other up when you fall. It’s truly accepting one another’s differences and learning to love each other more for them. It’s important that you and your partner know that your love for each other is unwavering; nothing kills a relationship quicker than insecurity about whether or not your partner loves you. This leads us into the next important ingredient…
COMMUNICATION: Talking to each other regularly is key. Having open and honest lines of communication is critical. So talk to your partner, share your feelings, complement them, tell them how much you love them, etc… let them know that you care. By learning how to talk to one another, when things get challenging it can be easier to communicate more clearly and avoid any misunderstanding that could cause hurt, anger or confusion. Also, remember that while sharing your thoughts, feelings, and ideas is important, it’s also equally important to be a good listener.
A lot of the time, communicating how much you love your partner is the easy part, the tough part is communicating the things that may be bothering you, the things you are feeling insecure about, and the things that need to change. No one likes having difficult conversations, but if you communicate openly on a regular basis about both the positives and negatives, these conversations become much less stressful. Talking about the things that are bothering you, will help prevent you from bottling up emotions which can lead to big arguments, hurt feelings and a rocky relationship. These conversations will help you work through issues and come up with a plan together on how to work on any issues you are having.
The most important part about having these sorts of intimate conversations is to not judge one another about their insecurities and understand that you both are entitled to your own feelings and opinions. These feelings make us who we are and it’s important that we respect our partners feelings. Hopefully with some honest communication you can understand why your partner feels this way.
TRUST: Trust is knowing that your partner is always there and that you can always count on one another. Always be dependable, available to support one another, and responsive to each other’s needs. Breaking the trust of your partner can often times be the biggest downfall of a relationship. Trust isn’t just about being faithful to your partner, it goes much deeper and the breakdown of trust can many times be a gradual thing. This is what trust means to us:
- Following through on promises
- Knowing you can count on your partner when you really need them
- Respecting the privacy of your relationship
- Knowing you can communicate with your partner without being judged by them
- Knowing that you have one another’s best interest at heart
This is just a short list of what trust means to us. A great exercise with your partner can be to talk about what trust means to you. We would love to hear what you think trust is, comment below!
RESPECT: Knowing one another and accepting each other for who we are; know one another’s thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and boundaries. Take time to listen to one another’s point of view, needs, and desires, and honor them all. Never put one another down and always have each other’s back. If you can’t count on your partner to have your back, then who can you count on?
MAINTAINING YOUR OWN IDENTITY: We can’t stress enough the importance of this one! If you want a long lasting happy relationship, you can’t lose who you are as an individual. Sure, your partner becomes part of who you are, but you need to make sure that you maintain the person that you grew to be and who your partner grew to love. One of the keys to our successful marriage is maintaining our own separate hobbies and time alone. We certainly miss each other when the other is not around, but it makes our time together that much more special. Also, if you trust your partner, you don’t need to worry when they spend a few hours away, doing something they love. Hobbies are a great way to relieve stress, reflect on your feelings, and have fun. Its great to have hobbies that you enjoy doing together, but don’t be afraid to spend time apart doing other things you enjoy. We have a wonderful balance in our house; Dan spends a lot of time on the golf course with his friends in the spring and summer while Keri is out running and doing yoga with her friends. Without doing these things, we would lose our identities and then neither of us would be very happy.
People tend to lose some friends when they start new relationships because they replace their social circles with their new partner. We don’t want that to happen. We feel it’s so important to make time for friends and doing the things we enjoy. People will sometimes question us about whether or not we spend enough time together, but we do and there needs to be a balance, always making sure we have time for each other and time for ourselves. We love spending time together traveling, exercising, eating, watching movies and so much more, but we are not afraid to spend time apart doing other things we enjoy doing separately.
GRATITUDE: It’s easy to take the little things for granted, but thanking and recognizing your partner for the things they do is important, i.e. for taking the trash out, making dinner, doing laundry, and other daily activities is so important. Showing gratitude allows your spouse to feel loved and appreciated. I know you may be thinking, that taking the trash out or doing laundry is part of being an adult, but chores are a lot more satisfying when you and your partner have a mutual appreciation for the work you put in on a daily basis.
SELFLESSNESS: When you think about how to make your spouse’s day a little brighter, you will become naturally more supportive, more giving and more loving. This helps your relationship flourish. Knowing that you have one another’s best interests at heart creates a strong and lasting relationship.
Being in a committed loving relationship can bring you a level of happiness and contentment that you never thought possible. Just remember that you are a team and with any team, the keys to success are communication, trust, respect, and selflessness. With a loving team it’s also important to sprinkle in some gratitude, love and make sure you also maintain your own identity. We are always trying to learn new ways to strengthen our bond with each other and we hope that this post will help strengthen your bond with your partner.
