How To Make Your Relationship Strong and Last Longer
Being in a relationship can be one of the most incredible, beautiful and fulfilling parts of life. Healthy romantic relationships can light up a part of you that only real love can and add a richness to your daily life that can better your health and well-being significantly. When you open yourself up to someone and truly let them in to your heart, you are giving a piece of yourself to them. This can leave you in.a very vulnerable place; to be both hurt and experience loss. Some say that being in love is taking a risk – but if you make that choice, it can be the most worthwhile risk you take. While there is no way to guarantee that your relationship will last forever and never end, there are ways you can strengthen your relationship and put effort toward making it withstand the test of time and the inevitable trials you will face. Keep reading to learn how to make your relationship strong and last longer.
The Importance of Romantic Relationships
Healthy personal relationships of any kind are so crucial to your health and well-being, both emotionally and physically. Being loved, accepted and supported by other people, few or many, helps to reduce stress levels, encourages you to achieve goals and improves your overall satisfaction with life. Romantic relationships, more specifically, can add a different level of contentment and fulfillment.
There are infinite benefits to relationships. In fact, many more benefits than drawbacks. If you are in a healthy relationship, you are more likely to thrive and succeed in life.
Some of the most common and notable benefits of being in a relationship include:
Reduced stress
Healthier immune system
Higher self-esteem and self-worth
Having a greater sense of purpose
Better ability to heal
Decreased feelings of isolation and loneliness
Healthier habits and behaviors
Overall greater satisfaction with life
Having a long term partner can enrich your life and lead you to be happier and more successful. When you have someone there to walk beside you through all of life’s ups and downs, you are more likely to achieve your goals and venture confidently out into the world knowing that you have someone there to keep you safe and catch you if you fall.
Ways to make your relationship strong and last longer
Knowing how important it is to have a relationship and make it last, you may want to learn more about how to do that. Pouring your all into a relationship isn’t always second nature, especially if you were not demonstrated healthy romantic relationships in your life. There is no clear answer or sure-fire way to keep a relationship healthy and happy, but there are areas that you can focus your energy on that will be the most worthwhile.
Focus on healthy communication
You’ve probably heard it before, but one of the most important components in a functional, long-lasting relationship is communication. When there are open, honest conversations about thoughts, feelings and experiences, there is less room for hurt, assumptions, misunderstandings and resentment. It’s important to be honest and forthecoming with your partner when you are feeling hurt or upset about something, as it gives them the opportunity to listen, hear you and hopefully take action in helping to resolve the problem. You can never assume that your partner will know what you’re thinking or feeling without sharing it openly and some of the most common arguments result of that assumption.
Additionally, it is equally important to focus your attention and effort on being a safe place for your partner to share honestly. When your partner comes to you to share their feelings, try your hardest to listen with intent and in an effort to hear them and come toward them. Being an active listener and a safe person for your partner to share with, offers the opportunity for you to become closer and connect on a deeper level. Communication is one of the pillars of any strong relationship and is an area to focus a lot of effort and energy in order to strengthen your relationship.
2. Build mutual trust
Another one of the primary pillars of a strong relationship is trust. While trusting your partner in the way of relationships outside of your partnership is hugely important, it goes much deeper than that. Trust is present in every area of your relationship; trust that your partner will protect you and keep you safe, trust that they will be there for you when things are easy AND when they are hard, trust that your partner will follow through with their word and trust that they will be there at the end of every day like they promised. When you open up your heart and life to another person, you are almost immediately putting trust into them. If you have been hurt previously by a past partner and you struggle with trusting people freely, this can make building new relationships even harder.
Trust is something that typically comes more naturally in the beginning of a relationship, but if it is damaged at any point it takes a lot of time and effort to gain it back. Trust can be fractured and it can also be completely broken, and sometimes, irreparable. But if both people in the partnership are committed to earning and also offering trust, it can be rebuilt. Prioritizing trust in your relationship is very impactful.
Some ways to ensure strong trust in your relationship include:
Being fully transparent and honest, even when it’s hard
Showing up for your partner in small ways and big
Saying what you mean and meaning what you say
Set boundaries in areas that create insecurity for your partner
Building trust requires you to work hard to show that you are trustworthy, but it also requires effort in allowing yourself to trust your partner. It is scary and vulnerable to put trust in someone, especially if you have been hurt by them or someone else in the past. But trust cannot be fully built in the relationship if one partner isn’t willing to put trust in the other. As stated earlier, loving and trusting someone is a risk; but if it is healthy and successful, it can be a risk well worth taking.
3. Prioritize conflict resolution
It is often misunderstood that if there is conflict in a relationship, it means that it is unhealthy or dysfunctional. The truth is that disagreeing and conflict is a natural component to a relationship. What matters more than anything, is how you fight and then how you respond and resolve the conflicts. The term “fighting fair” is a very important one to remember when learning healthy conflict resolution habits and also unlearning old unhealthy habits.. Many of us come into relationships with negative or unhealthy conflict habits established and so it is often a work of undoing and unlearning in order to get to a place of “fighting fair”.
What does fighting fairly really look like? Psychologist John Gottman created a foundation for couples counseling and coined it “The Gottman Method”, that focuses primarily on communication and how to resolve conflict in a productive way that builds intimacy and mutual respect. In the Gottman Method, there are the four pillars of conflict; also known as “The Four Horsemen”. They are Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling. The idea is to identify these four fatal flaws in communication and conflict resolution, and replace them with the opposite response to heal communication breakdowns and fight in a more productive way. Regardless of if you implement the Gottman Method in your relationship, focusing on conflict and conflict resolution is one of my most important can strengthen your relationship greatly.
4. Practice forgiveness
As humans, we are flawed. No matter how much therapy we’ve done or how hard we’ve worked to better ourselves, we still are capable of hurting one another both intentionally and inadvertently. So, in a long-term partnership hurting your partner’s feelings or having your feelings hurt is unavoidable. An important piece to getting through the inevitable ups and downs of a life together, is to be quick to forgive. This isn’t always easy or natural, and there are times where forgiveness is much harder to offer. But generally if you focus your energy on being eager to forgive, your relationship will in turn be more resilient. Try not to hold things over your partner’s head that they have done to wrong you, whether it is 5 minutes ago or 5 years ago. Forgiveness sets your relationship and partner free, but it also sets you free of anger, resentment, hurt or negative feelings you are harboring that are more than likely weighing you down.
5. Prioritize physical intimacy
For many people, physical intimacy comes naturally and is one of their primary love languages. But regardless of whether it is of top priority to you or one of your most important personal needs, every relationship should have physical intimacy as a strong part of their foundation. Through the many seasons of life, it can be one of the areas that suffers most. Whether you’re dealing with significant stress, significant life events, navigating parenthood or any other distraction, physical intimacy and connection can be put on the “back burner”. While it is understandable why this happens, it’s crucial to not lose sight of that connection completely and put in the extra effort it takes to reconnect physically as much as possible given your current circumstances. This can mean sexual intimacy, or it can also mean hand-holding, back massages or even just loving embraces. Physical connection and intimacy doesn’t always have to be big gestures and sometimes, less means more.
6. Have realistic expectations
A lot of couples in relationships run into problems when they set expectations for their partner and for the relationship. Setting more realistic expectations of your partner allows them to be more successful in meeting your needs, which in turn makes them feel more positive in the relationship. If we are constantly setting high or even unrealistic expectations for our partner, they’re often not going to meet them - which leads you to feeling unsatisfied and disappointed, and leaves them feeling like they are always failing and falling short for you.
Additionally, setting realistic expectations for the relationship will allow for you to be overall more satisfied and content along the way. Relationships come with inevitable ups and downs, hard seasons and easier times as well. If either partner goes into the relationship with the expectation that this is not the case, they will be left discouraged, confused and defeated. Both people in a relationship should enter knowing that there will be bumps in the road, but confidence that your connection and love will allow you to get through them. Using all of the above mentioned tips for a healthy relationship will help you to build a foundation that is strong enough to withstand life’s inevitable trials and come out stronger than ever.
The Takeaway
At the end of the day, being in a relationship can be incredibly good for your health and well-being, both physically and emotionally. It can be fulfilling, life-giving and bring so much peace to your every day life, to have a companion by your side through all that life brings you. If you have found that love and a partnership that brings you joy, it’s important to give all you have to nurture and strengthen it. If you and your partner are ready to put your energy into building a strong foundation and creating a truly meaningful and deep connection, your relationship can withstand the tests of time.
Change Your Relationship Today
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