5 tips to have a healthy relationship with your partner…

Any handful of tips are never enough to have a healthy relationship. What matters is how easy the tips or ways are to execute in the real life. The tips I have shared below are not enough to cover all relationship problems but they are easy to execute with the help of little practice every day.

Learn to express interest

Good and healthy communication is always two-way communication. When your partner is listening to you, make sure you don’t just talk about yourself. Ask questions to your partner which will indicate to them that you are interested in their everyday life as well. As we grow in the relationship, we start to take many things for granted about our partner and as a result, we might not show interest in their everyday life. You can ask small questions which can help you to express your interest in your partner, like, ” How was your day?”, ” How are you feeling?”, express your true care and concern about your partners family members which will make them feel better.

According to John Gottman’s research on a healthy relationship, more than 80% times healthy couples attempt to connect with their partner by showing interest in them. For more quality and deeper conversation, you can ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions can not simply be answered in “YES” or “NO”. Question’s which usually starts with, “What is it like to…”, “Tell me your experience about…”, “Tell me something about your friends…”, “What are your favourite memories…”. The conversation based on the open-ended question will certainly help you to find a deeper and enhanced connection between you and your partner. Well, This is something which you can learn in order to have a happy and healthy relationship.

Tiny little things to improve your relationship

We all wish to have a successful long term relationship. Every long term relationship is based on many tiny small everyday things which make it healthy like, small healthy talks with your partner, small act for your partner which will make them feel good.

During any random daily talk, you can tell a couple of things which you admire about your partner. You can simply express the gratitude towards your partner for their support or maybe you can simply say how good your partner is managing the work-life balance. You don’t need to explain it in detail, just say it. It will make your partner happy.

Another thing is, Spending just a few minutes per day to give a warm hug to each other literally releases a lot of stress and negativity. The importance of these tiny little things are, we are very busy with our work life that we don’t express much to our partner and most of the successful healthy relationship are actually healthy because of these every day tiny little things you can do to each other.

Be soft during the conflict-Sign of a healthy relationship

Conflicts in any relationship are normal. All healthy couples engage in some conflicts and conflicts are inevitable in a healthy relationship too and by avoiding any conflict for a longer time would lead to an unhealthy pattern in the relationship. It’s about how we deal with the conflict. What I mean being soft during conflict is to avoid certain things which might lead a conflict to a personal attack on your partner. Things to avoid are blaming or criticizing each other and instead focus on what actually went wrong and not who is wrong. It is quite difficult to understand and execute during all these things in the heat of the moment but it’s all a learning process while you both grow in the relationship.

“Conflict is an opportunity to learn how to love each other better over time” – Dr John Gottman

We learn somethings from every conflict. These learning can be different for everyone but few core things remain constant which are equally important to learn. Soft communication also helps to build and strengthen trust between couples.

What you should never do during conflict

• Blame or criticize your partner
• Being defensive
• Not to respond at all (Shutting down yourself)
• Make your partner feel inferior

What you must do during conflict

• Always respect each other- mutual respect in very important even when you are having a conflict with each other. This is a very important sign of a healthy couple.
• Try to listen to your partner. Without listening to your partner, you would never understand what is the real problem they are facing.
• Acknowledge your partner’s emotions and feelings. Acknowledging does not mean you are wrong and your partner is right. It just means that you are validating their emotions and feelings.
• Be open to what they want to say and accept it. This will also help you to talk with them when your turn will come. Yes, you heard me right, your turn. You both can not talk or argue at the same time. This is where the listening part plays a very important role.
• Try to be positive. I am aware that during the heat of the moment, this one is really difficult, but it’s all about learning and practising. It also means, does not jump on any immediate conclusion while you guys are still in the middle of the conflict.

Learn to repair negative talks

After any conflict couples should learn to repair what went wrong between them and not to repeat the same things again and again. You also have to admit your mistakes. This is also a sign of a healthy relationship that you should admit your mistakes due to which conflicts are arising. This will surely help to repair negative talks and thoughts you had during and after the conflict.

Don’t try to fix everything- Let few things remain unsolved

According to Dr John Gottman, “The idea that couples should solve all of their problems is a myth”.

To expect a relationship without conflict is itself can be a cause of the conflict. As discussed, conflicts are inevitable even for healthy couples. But what healthy couples do differently is to accept that you and your partner are not perfect. Some natural flaws in each other will remain irrespective of huge efforts to change your partner.

In the journey of your relationship with, you will find many traits about your partner which you might not like. You should not always need to change your partner in order to love them. You can still have a healthy relationship. Let some of the things remain unsolved and focus on other areas as well.