Watch “7 keys to a great relationship” by clicking on the title or picture below:
This video illustrates seven essential requirements of having a fantastic relationship.
1. Respect is the fundamental requirement for a good relationship. Contempt, on the other hand, will destroy a relationship. Body language and tone of voice are key in being respectful.
2. Be considerate without being overly accommodating. You shouldn’t ignore your own needs and desires or do things that you really don’t want to do.
3. Discuss problems without venting. Don’t talk non-stop about unimportant details and don’t attack the other person. You don’t want to bring down the relationship or bore the other person with trivialities and negativity.
4. Remain calm. Don’t become reactive or defensive even if the other person is angry or over-reacting. It only takes one person to keep things positive or at least prevent hostility.
5. Pursue your own passions. You don’t have to do everything together. Also don’t diminish the other person’s interests or sports.
6. Keep the romance, fun, and passion alive. Don’t allow your relationship to become mundane and ordinary.
7. Appreciate the good in the other person. Don’t be over-critical and don’t focus on the flaws. By appreciating the good in the other person, you tend to bring out the best in the other person and in the relationship.
Romantic relationships with intimate partners (significant others) are comprised of three components:
I. Mate Selection (Choice)
II. Relationship Model or Hypothesis
III. Termination Triggers
Mate selection is critical, of course, but even more important is to ensure compatibility between the mate selected and the model of relationship one has in mind. There are as many types of relationships as there are couples and one would do well to define precisely how one would like to live her life with her spouse. An open marriage calls for one kind of partner and a traditional one calls for another. Mismatches between the personality, character, and temperament of the members of the couple and the relationship model they have adopted are often the main fount of trouble, gnawing at the foundations and leading to the disintegration of the pair.
Yet, even when one’s mate, partner, or spouse has been selected with care to perfectly fit the relationship one has in mind – some relationships crumble. This is because the members of the couple have disparate “termination triggers” and abandonment anxiety thresholds. Insecurities, fears, and codependence often rise to the surface and lead to self-defeating behaviours, such as preemptive abandonment; (“I will walk away before he does.”)
Romantic, intimate relationships are comprised of various dimensions, functions, and axes. Deconstruct your past relationships in order to avoid mistakes in future ones.
Ask yourself:
How do you perceive the role of your relationships in fostering your personal growth and in attaining your life’s goals? This is known as your Personal Narrative.
Which of these internal and external functions matter to you most in your romantic relationships (use your answers construct a prioritized list)?
— Experiencing Love: romantic, “mature” (as distinct from mere and fleeting infatuation)
— Being desired, chosen, focus of attention/adulation
— Being exclusive/monogamous
— Excitement, thrill — to counter boredom
— Stability, safety, predictability, reliability — to counter anxiety
— Mirroring (emphasizing and sharing similarities)
— Personal growth enhancement
— Giving/Receiving
— Conformity (enhancing your social acceptability)
— Conferring social status
— Sexual Availability
— Non-sexual intimacy
— Procreation (having children)
— Companionship (unrestricted and immediate physical and mental availability of another person with whom one shares the same range of opinions, interests, and pursuits.)
— Friendship (deep, all-pervasive bonding to another person, involving full, unmitigated trust, a great measure of non-sexual or also sexual intimacy and the pursuit of the mutual well-being and happiness of both parties.)
Then proceed to identify your Commitment Triggers:
What is it that determines whether a prospective partner would end up being a one-night stand or your life-long spouse?
What are your Relationship Predictors?
Commit to paper (or screen) everything that your inner voice tells you when it says: “this maybe the one” and when it guesstimates how long the relationship is likely to last.
List your expectations of yourself and of your partner and generate a coherent Expectations (“what to look for”) Profile.
Determine how you test for reciprocity. Is it a quid pro quo type of ledger or accounting approach? Is it more diffuse, synoptic test?
How do you build trust in the context of your relationships? Do you share information with your partner? Are you more into “information discovery” (not to put too fine a point on it: spying)? Do you constantly gauge and test his reliability and responsibility? To what extent are you self-aware of your own good and bad qualities, fortes and limitations or shortcomings?
Sexual Trajectory:
What is the frequency of sex throughout the life of your typical past relationship? Are you sexually creative, imaginative, and inventive? Do you initiate or merely respond to advances and cues? Do you frequently end up finding yourself in sexless relationships? Are you mostly sexually available – or withdrawn? To what extent do gender roles express themselves in your sex life with your intimate partner? What about social, religious, and cultural strictures and biases?
Relationship Horizon
The partners’ expectations regarding the longevity of the relationship determines the relationship style. Do you expect your relationships to last, or are you doubtful, pessimistic, cynical, and fatalistic from the get-go?
Proximity – Spatial
Are you into cohabitation or otherwise sharing the same premises or area? Or, would you rather live in separate apartments and schedule your encounters? What role does territoriality play in the thriving and survival of your relationships?
Proximity – Temporal
Do you need to do everything together with your partner (clinging) or can you give him/her space? (Synchronous interactivity or time-delayed interaction)
Do you immediately progress from casual acquaintance to full-fledged commitment – or do you give it time and proceed incrementally, carefully, and gradually? Role Allocation
Who decides on the allocation of roles in the couple and how are they allocated? Do you typically talk over your roles (functions and responsibilities) and reach an agreement (explicit role allocation) or do you leave it to “life” and play it by ear (role allocation by emergence)?
Role Specificity
Once the roles in your relationships are defined are they “cast in stone” (rigid) – or subject to change as circumstances change and both of you grow and develop?
Some people who want more “intimacy” really want more validation. They think that intimacy involves one partner who discloses, while the other accepts and validates that person.
In contrast, however, a successful, long-term, passionate relationship is based on self-disclosure without expecting validation from the other person.
Other-validated intimacy
The problem with expecting validation is that we often validate our partner simply to reduce anxiety and to accommodate his or her fears and limitations. While we may tell ourselves we are reducing the anxiety of our partner, often it is really our own anxiety that we cannot tolerate when our partner is under stress.
If a partner’s inner response is “You need to figure this out on your own”…, but he or she chooses to respond out loud by nodding and smiling, the result is a deadening of the soul and a loss of passion within the relationship.
Validating our partner can temporarily improve a partner’s functioning. However, it often creates long-term problems, such as increased codependency. Codependency involves increased vulnerability to the other partner’s manipulation, an expanding obligation to ease our partner’s anxiety, and a tendency toward always presenting oneself in a particular way to get a positive reaction.
Self-validated intimacy
Self-validated intimacy, as opposed to venting, allows your partner to truly see you without imposing an obligation on him or her to validate you. It requires a certain discipline to look at yourself objectively and to accept your partner’s authentic response, whether it’s a lack of interest or disagreement.
While it’s nice to be validated by others, you are more likely to get true validation only when you don’t seek it. When you’re willing to accept a person’s honest response, then you can meet that person on a deeper, truly-intimate level. Ironically, less validation means greater intimacy and the possibility of a long-term passionate relationship.
"Mo' Air" Jonny Moseley by Mimi Stuart Live the Life you Desire
There are usually good intentions of love and helpfulness behind being exceptionally useful. Yet, over-functioning by “doing everything” often stems from an unconscious impulse to increase another person’s dependence on and loyalty to the relationship.
All relationships involve some degree of dependence. For most people it’s quite nice when another person helps out. Yet, as one partner does an extravagant share of the work, the other partner may start feeling engulfed and overwhelmed by the assistance. He or she may feel encumbered with a growing sense of obligation, causing desire to be with the partner to fade.
When people become highly dependent on their partners, a sense of indebtedness bordering on guilt causes passion and intimacy to suffer. While it’s important that partners are considerate and helpful, it’s equally important to avoid letting dependency and indebtedness smother desire.
Those who tend to over-function would improve their relationships by focusing more on their own enjoyment and desires and giving their partner greater breathing room and independence. This means resisting doing everything, even at the risk that some things won’t be executed as well as they like.
As Kahlil Gibran wrote in “The Prophet,”
Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Many couples gradually stop kissing over time. This can be a sign that they no longer cherish each other, because indifference or resentment has insidiously invaded the relationship.
It’s important to have frank conversations about the changes in your relationship that bother you. The situation is not going to improve without broaching the subject.
If you want the truth, don’t complain, whine, or anticipate feeling hurt. Be direct, but set the stage so that your partner won’t feel attacked. You could say something like, “I like being in a relationship with affection and intimacy. I’d like to know why you don’t kiss me anymore.”
Be ready for an honest response. Hopefully, it’s something easy to deal with—maybe one of you has bad breath, in which case it’s easy to talk to a dentist or doctor.
It could be something more serious, such as lack of desire and attraction. Many things can lead to lack of desire. Here are three main areas to consider:
1. People stop being affectionate when they feel resentment, which can result from being taken for granted, treated as secondary, or dealt with in a controlling, critical way. Ask whether your attitude toward your partner is causing him or her to withdraw affection and openness.
2. People may also lose interest when their partners let themselves go, living in such a way that shows they’ve lost respect for themselves. When people don’t have the discipline or motivation to take care of themselves physically, intellectually, and emotionally, their partners generally lose desire for them.
Ask yourself whether your attitude toward yourself is inviting desire. We’re not talking about getting face-lifts and liposuction, but simply maintaining a healthy lifestyle and vibrancy about yourself.
3. Kissing may come to an end because it is too mechanical, lackluster, or insensitive. This might reflect one’s attitude toward oneself or the other person or it might be the result of not being tuned in with one’s sensuality.
Some people view kissing to be the most intimate of physical contact, revealing a person’s true sensuality. To engage in good kissing, like engaging in a good relationship, you have to be full of curiosity and appreciation while intentionally focusing on the real beauty of the person being kissed.
