“What comes easy won’t last long, and what lasts long won’t come easy.”
— Francis Kong
The End of The Honeymoon PHASE
When it comes to our physical health, we know that prevention is better than cure. We know that what you eat, how you sleep and whether you move your body often enough matters. We know that good habits, worked at today, predict our future health and even our longevity.
However, when it comes to the health of our most important relationship, our primary intimate relationship, many seem to lack the motivation necessary, to consistently attend to things with their partner in such a healthy way.
Often, insufficient time is spent thoughtfully considering how to behave in ways that foster relational health over the long run. Because of this, things inevitably deteriorate. As this occurs, feelings of disappointment build. Sometimes this happens slowly, sometimes not. The speed of deterioration depends on the individuals involved.
Trust, admiration, and respect ebb away like a retreating tide. We watch them leave. We throw up our hands.
Apathy or resentment take up residence. The once clear skies of our relationship are now blackened. More often than not, we blame each other. We tell ourselves we did everything we could. But did we?
Many couples come to me in what they feel is crisis. Most explain that the initial euphoria, newness, and thrill of the early days has passed. What they are left with is undoubtedly more challenging and often unpleasant relational terrain. Issues abound from both sides. The once perfect togetherness has been replaced with concerns regarding the ‘rightness’ of the other. They are no longer quite so convinced they have chosen someone worthy of their affection, their respect or even their commitment.
“A relationship is like a house. When a lightbulb burns out you do not go and buy a new house, you fix the light bulb.”
Unknown
Relationships are hard WORK
When we explore things further however, what we often reveal is a fundamental misunderstanding regarding the true nature of intimate relationships. People don’t seem to understand that relationships were never supposed to be easy. They were also, whether we like it or not, never intended to make us eternally happy. They are in fact more perfectly suited to facilitate our continuous growth as individuals, and growing is painful and incredibly difficult.
Problems, and many of them are par for the course in intimate relationships. Problems do not mean that something is fundamentally wrong. Difficulty and suffering are not evidence that you have made a mistake in who you chose. It is truer to say that due to the nature of you choosing a fellow human, you chose to take on, consciously or unconsciously, all the complexities and abnormalities that that person dragged into the relationship with them. Like you dragged in yours.
Time to unpack your bags folks.
We are all flawed
In the beginning, we can hide the more unsavoury contents of our psychological luggage. We take out only the nice items. We tell stories of our more functional sides. We leave out the details of our more embarrassing emotional belongings. We have that stuffed firmly at the bottom of the case.
But we can’t keep it all hidden forever, that is just not how us human’s roll. Over time, who we are in our entirety becomes clearer to the other person, and the inevitable trouble brews. He certainly didn’t tell her that he had a gambling problem, and she didn’t think it important to mention she has been on antidepressants for over ten years.
There are no exceptions to this process of revelations. There is no perfect other, no ‘right’ one. The right ones will always prove to be the wrong ones in some way, at some point.
When you really understand this, you come to accept that you can either attempt to make it work with this less than perfect one, or you have to start the whole process over again with someone new. If this is your choice, you can look forward to the unpacking of yet another mixed bag later on down the line.
Commitment
That brings us back to the surely wise and absolutely necessary day-to-day work of committed relationships. I am convinced it is this consistent effort that ensures couples stand a chance of creating a relationship that is more healthy, more stable, more enjoyable and more satisfying. It is this steady care and attention, that serves to protect relationships from running into serious and potentially insurmountable trouble later on. In fact, it is this commitment to effort that is the very nature of real and enduring love.
So, commitment to continuously growing is at the very heart of successful relationships. Thriving couples understand that there will always be things to learn and areas they need to work on. They do not fear this work, instead they embrace it as a beautiful part of sharing your life with another person. They understand that this working together, this honest struggling to grow and develop, is something that promotes intimacy.
5 Relationship Habits to Practice
To guide you in this endeavour, I will explain five fundamental good relational habits that will undoubtedly strengthen your chances of success as a couple.
- Work on the parts of yourself that are unhealthy or dysfunctional. Deal with your insecurities and inadequacies. Learn to manage your own anxieties. Learn to look after yourself in this way as this is the job of an adult. It is not your partners job to make you feel okay about who you are, that is predominantly down to you. This work on you ensures that you remain attractive to your partner. It is also the stuff of self-respect and self-trust and will have you enjoying being you much more over time. Remember, nobody with an ounce of self-respect enjoys being with someone who can’t be bothered or isn’t able to look after themselves.
- Learn to reduce emotional reactivity with your partner. It is difficult to get close to someone who is too emotionally reactive. For some this reactivity is hot; shouting, name calling, throwing things etc. For others, it is cold but just as harmful, withdrawing, sulking, silent treatment, withholding affection etc. Again, maturity dictates we stop behaving in such ways if we are truly interested in becoming closer to those we love. When someone is in control of themselves in this way consistently, we feel safer to be around them. We want to move closer to them rather than further away.
- Understand and commit to addressing problems as they arise. This is an essential part of growing as a couple and as individuals. Learn to talk openly about difficult things. Problems do not go away on their own but rather compound over time. You may kid yourself that by avoiding those difficult discussions here and there, you are choosing a quiet life, but this is nonsense. Become courageous, deal with the things that crop up between you no matter how stressful you find it or how frightened or reluctant you feel. Carefully and respectfully identify solutions as this will make you stronger over time and will also build trust.
- Ensure you have quality time together as a couple. Get rid of unnecessary activities that prevent this from happening. Put down your devices and turn off the bloody television. Television is not quality time. If you need to diarise time, do it. Consider regular relationship check ins. Discuss how you are as a couple. Include anything you are working on as individuals and as a couple. This will ensure you are keeping track of your progress and not slipping off track.
- Learn to talk about sex and affection so that you are both satisfied in this way. You are going to need to keep it on the table so to speak, perhaps you can decide which table! You won’t get away with trying to avoid making sense of that part of your relationship if one or both of you are still wanting sex and/or intimacy to happen. Couples that keep this part of their relationship alive do better in many ways. They remain closer and are more bonded overall. They are even more physically healthy. Trust the science! Conversely, couples that fail to keep this side of things open and healthy, usually end up doing things in more covert and damaging ways. This is never a good choice. If we work at it, conversations about sex and affection can end up being as comfortable as talking about what you might like for dinner.
To conclude, to avoid abject relational nightmares, such as infidelity, addiction, the absence of intimacy, lack of emotional connection or separation, we need to work on ourselves and work on the relationship. Not just in January or when things approach crisis, but rather ALL THE TIME. Relationships do not maintain themselves.
You can’t get a dog, or have a kid, and then decide you can’t be bothered to give them your attention, or take care of their daily needs, and expect them not to get sick or go mad. Your spouse is the same. They crave your love and your time. They also need you to take care of yourself because they are probably having a difficult enough time sorting their own shit out to have to deal with too much of yours!
I could assure you that if you seriously attempted the things I have suggested for one month, your relationships would improve. If you did it for one year, then you would find yourselves in a completely different relational space. Imagine what you could achieve if you did them for a lifetime. What kind of a couple would you become?
I am definitely not saying it will be easy or comfortable, there is no chance of that! Some battles are bloody and long. To succeed in love though, is truly meaningful. To overcome all the hurdles over the years is something like a work of art.
Masterpiece or shit show, we each get to decide.
It is better to succeed at something difficult than to give up defeated. We surely don’t teach our children to run away from problems or give up on difficult things. That would be unimaginable. Heroes, we tell them face monsters after all.
