How do you make love and relationships work? When you are in a relationship with the one you love , married or not, you can live through complete and utter joy or catastrophic pain.
Love in any relationship brings with it many expectations and much hope. Being loved unconditionally is the paramount dream of a great many people. When you are loved unconditionally it means you are accepted for whom and for what you are; having a sense of belonging and acceptance; the feeling of being protected and safe; but most of all it means deep rooted intimacy, romance and passion united by an everlasting bond.
But in time love and the relationship get onto the wrong pathway. Hope dies and in place of love comes anger, frustration and loneliness. During the honeymoon stage, the relationship is often based on lust and the illusion of you both becoming one. But in due course this magical image diminishes and the dream is broken. The fact is that the two people involved in a relationship are different. They have different needs, different expectations and different directions. However it is important to understand that the disenchantment that follows the discovery of this reality is expected, and is an unavoidable step on the pathway to finding true love and happiness. You just need to work on it.
Even with the best intentions, all relationships can gradually run down. Early pleasures become common place and boring, minor flaws become major faults, little eccentricities become really irritating. In order to counteract this it is advisable to surprise each other with new pleasures every now and again – the special complement, a card to say "I love you", a walk along the beach, flowers or a candle lit dinner are just afew examples.
So how do you make love and relationships work? Is it commitment to the strength of your romantic dream; an alignment of your value systems; appropriate communication skills; or is it just matter of luck?
Some say that the success of love and relationships is directly related to the evolutionary theory and to leadership. Leadership is the secret to a successful relationship. Genetically men are programmed as leaders. It goes back to the caveman days and involves the hunter instinct. The hunter mode is very strong in men when they first meet a new girlfriend. They show off their leadership skills – they ask her out; they pay for the meal; they open the door; they ask for her hand in marriage. And women, because of their biological instincts, are subconsciously attracted to this behaviour – they fall heads over heals in love with this potential husband; this provider; this potential father of their children. The truth is that this genetic programming makes sure that mankind survives.
The secret to saving a marriage lies in building attraction, not in solving problems. It is a fact that woman are driven more by emotion than logic. Therefore men, if you are always apologizing, discussing, compromising, grovelling or begging, it is like water off a duck's back – it just washes over a woman and may even kill the attraction you have for each other.
I am not saying that communication is not important. An effective leader will naturally have good relationship skill. In all relationship or leadership roles it is necessary to have good effective communication skills such as:
- Effective listening skills – understand your partner and have empathy. Good listening makes certain that you keep in tune with your partner and see your relationship through their eyes. When you listen well to what your partner is saying you are actually saying that you care.
- The ability to express your feelings properly, and the ability to understand your partner's feeling without judgement. Be assertive rather than passive when communicating your emotions. It is important to really care about your partner's feelings.
- A clean communication style – avoid things like being judgemental, blame, accusations, put downs, threats, bringing up old history, negative comparisons. Address the action not the person.
- Good negotiation skills – couples negotiate with their partner all the time. Negotiation is a process where both partners are involved in deciding how things in the relationship will be done, i.e. housework, bringing up children or taking a holiday. Negotiations need to be fair allowing both partners to achieve their goals without manipulation, hurt or regret.
- A constructive, healthy conflict resolution method. Deal with old conflicts and resentments and put them to bed and then develop some strategies to deal with current problems effectively. Take time out if necessary to stop fights escalating into verbal or physical abuse.
It is also important to learn how to cope with anger, whether you are the aggressor or the victim, because anger damages intimate 東京 人間関係 . Anger, whether openly aggressive or disguised as passive aggressive, causes emotional scars which deteriorate with each outburst, which in turn has a detrimental effect on both intimacy and trust. Emotional abuse has the same effects as physical abuse on a person.
So what do you have to do to build attraction and to develop an appropriate "couple system" to save your marriage? You need to work on the male's leadership skills and rekindle the hunter instinct in him so that he becomes that amazing, compelling, dynamic, charismatic leader she was attracted to at first. And then the female's biology will take care of the rest. Your sex drive will be reactivated and you will both fall wildly madly in love again. Every argument can turn into a passionate love making session!
And the good thing is that it is never too early or too late to learn new skills which will help you to have the ideal relationship. Everyone needs to work on their relationship skills – new lovers, long term partners and partners who are already experiencing difficulties with their relationship even where all hope of keeping the love and the relationship alive has vanished.
Love and relationships takes hard work, but it is important to work smarter not harder on them to achieve a long, happy, passionate and successful relationship.