Have you ever wondered why the majority of your favorite bands eventually break up? To understand why this is, you only have to think about how hard it is to make a relationship work between two people — and then multiply that by two, three, or even four.
Human beings are incredibly complicated. For a relationship to work, there are so many different dynamics that have to connect. While it’s impossible to say with complete certainty what makes for a successful relationship, there are some things that can be said with a relatively high amount of certainty.
Specifically, as you’ll learn below, to improve your chances of making your relationship a success, you’re going to want to prioritize doing things together, communicating openly with each other, and maintaining your own interests.
Do Things Together
When you think of your closest friends, there’s a good chance that you’re so close with them because you have a backlog of shared experiences together. Through these experiences, you were able to develop a more complete picture of them — a picture that resonated with your own personality. For example, you and your best friend may have experienced dangerous situations together over the years. In these situations, you were able to see how your friend treats you when real danger or stress is present — one of the most telling indicators of an individual. After seeing that your friend treated you well in these situations, you then developed a closer bond as a result of knowing that you could trust your friend from that point on.
You can apply this same idea to your romantic relationship. Sure, you might get along well with each other when things are rosy, but things may play out differently when real stress or danger arises. You may find that your partner becomes a different person when under stress. This different person may not treat you any worse, but you still may realize that you don’t want to be with someone that reacts in such a way — especially in relation to future plans such as raising children. Of course, you shouldn’t break up with someone based on one poorly-handled situation, but if your partner repeats such behavior again and again and shows no signs of development, then it may warrant more attention.
One way to see how you and your partner act when under stress together is to travel — ideally to very foreign places. While the pandemic has made this harder, placing yourselves in unfamiliar and stressful situations on the road is a great way to test your bond with one another. If traveling abroad isn’t in the cards, then a good substitute is to try a safe, socially-distanced activity that you’re both unfamiliar with. This activity should still be enjoyable, but it should also be difficult enough to put both of you under some stress.
Communicate Openly
Resentment is one of the biggest relationship breakers in existence, and it usually results from not openly communicating. This is because regardless of how small an issue is, it can build to a point of explosion if held inside of you.
Communicating when something bothers you is so crucial because, oftentimes, people don’t realize when they’re doing something that bothers you. As any divorce lawyer in Westminster will tell you, an issue can be as small as chewing too loudly. Even worse, what starts as a small issue like chewing too loudly often quickly grows into much larger issues. All of sudden, you’re thinking, “Does she not care about my needs? Surely she wouldn’t chew so loudly if she actually wanted to make me happy.” Then, after a stressful day filled with other problems, this type of thinking eventually leads to an impulsive decision to break up with your partner. This may sound insane, but given how complicated people are, it’s more common than you might like to think.
What’s even more insane is that something as simple as open communication could help avoid this entire situation from happening. By addressing an issue immediately as you notice it, you can stop yourself from spiraling and making the issue into something that it isn’t — potentially saving your relationship in the process.
Maintain Your Own Interests
People all too often throw their own interests to the wind when they get into a relationship. Their rationale is that they’re devoting more attention to their partner, but while this might be true, this isn’t always necessarily a good thing. Of course, people want to feel like they’re receiving enough attention from their loved ones, but they also don’t want to feel like their entirely responsible for their partner’s happiness. This can be the start of an unhealthy, codependent relationship — and ultimately lead to the need for a divorce lawyer in Erie.
You want to stay interesting to your loved one. To do this, you have to work to not let your own personality and interests be swept away in pursuit of making your relationship work. If your partner is actively trying to dissuade you from doing the things you enjoy doing (as long as they’re not harmful), then you may want to reconsider your relationship. There’s a very high chance that you’ll be better off with someone who encourages and supports your interests.
Takeaway
Making a relationship work takes more work than people might like to think. Given how difficult it is to fully understand just yourself, trying to understand another person to the point where you can successfully be in a romantic relationship with them is even harder. However, while each relationship is different, there are some things you can do to boost the odds of your relationship working out.
Specifically, you should invest in doing difficult, potentially-stressful things together as often as possible; addressing issues right away and communicating openly; and maintaining your own interests while also encouraging your partner to do the same. If all else fails, mediated communication, such as through a lawyer in Broomfield, can help resolve relationship issues. The more specific your mediated help is in relation to the issue at hand, such as a child custody lawyer in Erie for children-related situations, the better off everyone will be.
