Some Tips to Have a better relationship
- Take stock of what is truly important in your life. How would you spend your time if you had six months to live? How would you think about you relationship differently?
- Accept compromise and tolerate the persistent differences. Most happy couples learn to live with significant differences about money, in-laws, vacations, household chores, etc. Acknowledging the differences between the two of you does not have to mean you agree with them.
- Identify and separate your frustrations. Frustrations come from many sources, work, children, school etc. Frustrations can come from the present and the past. Avoid dumping frustrations on your partner that belong somewhere else.
Things to Do
- Catch your partner doing something right. Look for partner behaviors that are pleasing, and compliment our partner when he or she does them.
- Surprise your partner with thoughtfulness. Use your knowledge of your partner to please him or her unexpectedly. Allow your partner to discover your thoughtfulness by her or himself. Curb your disappointment if your partner misses your effort. Try something else.
- Carve out “couple time” your partner will enjoy. Our busy lives often fill up with tasks. Take time to spend with your partner.
Manage Tense Moments
- Before reacting angrily, count to ten. This old adage actually works. Speak your point, but without the anger. Every expression of negative emotion requires five expressions of positive emotion to regain a position of neutral feeling.
- Negotiate an unconventional place to discuss contentious issues. Moving from your usual location of arguments to another room can shift your disagreements enough to reduce negative feelings and introduce new ideas.
- Take a time out. When issues get heated, politely announce a twenty-minute time out and then return with a calm tone and the intention to compromise.
- When you know you have made a mistake, apologize. Few of us live closely with a partner without making some mistakes. Admit your fault, say your sorry, and explore ways of avoid the mistake in the future.
Listen with Your Heart
- Provide support, solutions are secondary. Feeling attached is a strong binding force in a relationship. Many partners seek to relieve the frustrations of daily life by sharing them with a partner. Really listening fosters togetherness. Many of us impatient listeners try to shorten the process by offering solutions before our partner is ready to hear them. Listen first. If a solution occurs to you say, “When you are ready, dear, I have a solution that might be helpful to you.” When your partner is ready, she or he will be more open to your idea.
- Deeply listen to your partner. On an issue that is important to your partner, repeat your partner’s words so that he or she knows you are really listening. Keep this up and when your partner is finished, say the three most challenging words in a relationship, “Is there more?” Continue listening until your partner can answer “No” to this question. This is difficult to do but is can go a long way to strengthening your relationship.
Drafting A Budget
- Make a date to discuss it:
- Plan for major milestones:
The first step in drafting your budget should be sitting down with
your partner to determine what it is you both want to work toward.
Is it buying a new home, remodelling the kitchen or starting a
family? The sooner you lay out your game plan, the better off you'll be,
said Wagenbach.
"Taking the long-road gives you more time to think about the savings approach you'll need to adopt," he said.
"A baby gives you a fixed amount of time, obviously, whereas something like a boat can be viewed as more of a long-term goal."
- Be sure to include a goal for each person:
"Each person needs to have at least one goal they want to see, even as an individual," said Wagner.
That's because there's usually one person (not both) who is bringing some financial baggage to the marriage.
"It still needs to be that person's responsibility to clean that up,"
she said, and that way no one will feel they're unable to work toward
the individual goals and dreams they might have.
Stop Fighting
- Go to bed angry. Several therapists and couples say forget that adage about always resolving anger before turning in -- and let someone sleep on the couch. "We've found that going to bed angry is often the best choice," says Lisa Earle McLeod, author and a 23-year marriage veteran. "It allows partners to clear their thoughts, get some sleep, and make a date to resume the fight (which might seem less important in the light of day)."
- Take a break. Even a 30-second break can help a couple push the reset button on a fight, licensed clinical counselor Timothy Warneka says. "Stop, step out of the room, and reconnect when everyone's a little calmer."
- Own up to your part of the fight. Melody Brooke, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says two things derail intense fights: admitting what you did to get your partner ticked off and expressing empathy toward your partner. Brooke, author of The Blame Game, says this can be difficult but is typically extremely successful. "Letting down our defenses in the heat of battle seems counterintuitive, but it is actually very effective with couples."
- Find the humor. Pamela Bodley and her husband have been married 23 years, "and Lord knows it [wasn't] easy in the early years," she says. "But it's much, much better now. We have a great sense of humor." Her husband Paul has kept the mood light by always saying he knows women keep skillets in their purse. So when he does something wrong, Bodley says, "I just pretend to hit him over the head with a skillet and say, 'TING!'"
- Shut up and touch. Brooke says there's a point where discussing the matter doesn't help. So couples need to just hold each other when nothing else seems to be working. "Reconnecting through touch is very important."
- Ban the "but." Jane Straus, author of Enough is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life, says couples often derail a resolution when they acknowledge the other partner's position and then add a "but" in their next breath, reaffirming their own. An example: "I can understand why you didn't pick up the dishes in the family room, but why do you think I'm the maid?"
- Remember what's important. "We soon realized that we don't have two beings in a marriage," Jacqueline Freeman says. "We actually have three: me, my husband, and the marriage. And we have to take good care of all three. So if we've been arguing about whose fault it is that the house is so messy, I might defend myself saying I was busy working on a project that will bring in more income, and he might say he was busy fixing something on the house that was broken. We used to be able to carry on a conversation like this for quite some time. But over the years, we seem to have developed a 15-minute timer for arguing. [Then] one of us will suddenly remember the key question: What's best for the marriage?"
References:
http://www.relationship-therapy-milwaukee.com/twelve-tips.php
http://www.businessinsider.com/budgeting-slideshow-2012-1?op=1
http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/features/how-to-stop-fighting-tips-for-married-couples
