“A relationship is like building a house; Build it well, or it will collapse.”
– Unknown
The success of a relationship depends on its foundation.
If both partners don’t build a strong foundation, their relationship is less likely to survive tough times.
And yes, there will be tough times.
Throughout a relationship, there will be job loss, death of parents and diagnosis of disease.
There will be tragedies that you and your partner cannot avoid.
Having a strong foundation for your relationship will allow these tragedies to strengthen your connection rather than weaken it.
Building Loving Habits
When building a relationship, you and your partner must focus on establishing good habits.
Habits are the difference between success and failure.
“The habits you develop are terribly important. They are more important than IQ,” says Warren Buffett.
Thus, no matter how strong you and your partner feel about each other, developing bad relationship habits can be your downfall.
Below is a list of habits you and your partner need to establish to build a strong foundation for your relationship:
Make a habit of showing respect and appreciation
The human brain has a familiarity bias. This cognitive bias causes your brain to devalue the things that are most familiar, including your partner.
If you want to have a healthy relationship, you need to protect your relationship from your brain’s devaluation process.
One way to protect against your brain’s devaluation process is to practice relationship gratitude daily. This includes journaling all the things you appreciate about your partner and your relationship. It’s an exercise that only takes five minutes a day. “Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings,” said William Arthur Ward. Another way to protect against your brain’s familiarity bias is by being intentional about showing respect. Some of the best ways to show respect are:
- Honoring boundaries
- No yelling
- Avoiding blaming
- No criticism
- Emotional validation
- Giving compliments
Make a habit of being affectionate
At the beginning of relationships, partners are touchy-feely, have sex frequently and kiss obsessively. After the honeymoon phase, these affectionate gestures become less frequent. This alone creates a lot of relationship problems. Acts of affection should always happen, not just in the beginning. Therefore, it is important that you and your partner make a habit of being affectionate. Be clear about the types of affection you like and put in your daily planner to display these acts of affection toward each other. When life gets busy, it is also a smart idea to schedule sex. It does not always have to be spontaneous.
Make a habit of growing, learning, and healing together
When you meet your partner, he or she is not a finished product.
He or she will continue growing, learning, and healing for a lifetime years—or at least, he or she should.
You should both encourage each other to advance in your career, improve your health, process childhood trauma, and keep learning new things.
You should see each other be better and do better.
This keeps the relationship alive and passionate.
Make a habit of having healthy conflict management
When two people with two different personalities develop a relationship, there will be disagreements.
Disagreements are neither good nor bad. It is how both partners manage the disagreements that determine if they are good or bad.
Therefore, in the beginning of a relationship, you and your partner must establish a habit of healthy conflict management.
Healthy conflict management includes:
- seeing conflict as an opportunity to learn about each other’s needs
- taking a timeout before the situation escalates
- talking in a calm and loving tone; not being argumentative
- coming to a mutual agreement on how to manage the situation going forward
One of the biggest differences between success and failure in a relationship is a couple’s inability to successfully manage their conflicts.
The better you and your partner manage conflict, the healthier your relationship will be.
Make a habit of spending quality time
In a relationship, you have to balance being an individual and being a lover. You must be capable of spending time alone as well as spending time with your partner. In some relationships, one partner is afraid to sacrifice time away from being an individual. These are usually the workaholics and self-improvement addicts. These personalities usually don’t see the value in spending quality time. In other relationships, the only time both partners spend time together is when the kids are around. This does not count as quality time. Quality time is only achieved when you and your partner create space to be alone and fully present with each other. “The best gift you can give anyone is to spend quality time with them,” says Laurence Overmire.
Conclusion
Your relationship should be structured around these five habits. Whenever you and your partner reflect on how your relationship is going, ymeasure it by your ability to respect each other, appreciate each other, be affectionate toward each other, growing and healing together, have healthy conflict management and spending enough time together. Your relationship is guaranteed to be healthy if you keep this general structure and foundation.
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