Tips to Nurture Loving Relationships All Year Long
Valentine’s Day is around the corner and Carizon staff share some skills and traits that help to nurture and sustain loving relationships all year long.
Love yourself.
If you have self love, you can tolerate differences in others. If you feel good about you, your behaviour tends to be in keeping with how you feel about yourself.
Accept and appreciate differences.
One of the hardest things is learning that there is room for a perfectly valid opinion other than your own. Being in love does not mean that you have to think about everything in the same way.
Take time to nurture the relationship.
You need to have time as friends to talk, to listen and to be close to one another. This requires energy. Being overtired and over-stressed is a roadblock to couple time. So, you not only need to take time to nurture the relationship, but also time to nurture yourself. If you see taking care of yourself as providing you with the necessary energy to do things for others then you are more likely to not see time for self care as being selfish. Have a bubble bath, light some candles and relax.
Include other people in your life.
Many couples see the notion of love as all encompassing, as exclusively doing everything together. For a relationship to work, it has to include other people. You need more than one person to meet your needs.
Cherish change.
People grow and change, ergo, relationships grow and change. We have to learn to respect these changes and to cherish the growth in each other. Find the joy in each stage of the relationship.
Laugh.
The ability to laugh together and to have fun helps you to put aside problems and to find the light side. Couples inside jokes, humorous memories and personalized “bits” create greater couple intimacy. No one else is privy to those shared moments.
Plan a life together.
Working together, doing things together and setting goals together help couples to look forward to the future. Even when bad things happen, planning together helps you overcome difficult times and to make your relationships stronger.
Demonstrate thoughtfulness.
Little acts of love support a loving relationship. When you see a card that fits, send it. When you are just thinking of someone, call them. Doing simple things just because you know how much someone else will like it is the essence of showing that you care.
Say “I love you” in many ways.
There are many phrases that say “I love you.” Try these:
- I’ll be there
- Maybe you’re right.
- How was your day?
- That’s another way of looking at it.
- I never thought of it that way.
These phrases tell those you love that they are important to you and you care what they think.
Focus on the positive.
It is easy to be in love at the beginning when the electricity is high. But, it takes real character to love somebody when you know all their flaws. Talk about the good times. Make a list about the good things in your relationship. You need to measure the strength of people along with the problems.
Pay attention to haircuts.
Notice the little things. Give out compliments freely. Talk about the great things others are doing or how terrific they look. Couples feed off one another. One person’s upbeat mood can be contagious and can be a real pick-me-up for their partner.
