Relationship Tips, No 1: Find out HOW your partner knows you love them. It is also important to know what is important to you.

How do you know if someone is being loving to you?
• Do they need to give you gifts on a regular basis? Say flowers, or chocolates or underwear if it’s your partner?
• Do they need to give you little gifts of service? Like doing the dishes without complaining, or always pouring the drinks as you settle in for the evening, or making your lunch?
• Do you need to be touched in certain ways? Some people need to be touched regularly and frequently in non-sexual ways during the day or they will never be interested in sex with their partner later on.
• Do you need to see certain things, hear certain things, feel, taste or touch certain things in order to know that you are loved?

And the same things go for other relationships that are friendship or work based. What is the currency you use? It is no use trying to get what you want in US dollars if the person you are dealing with wants Australian dollars and vice versa. It is the same in relationships.

Back to home… If your husband needs little acts of service from you to know he is loved and you need to be touched to know you are loved then you need to recognize this and decide to make changes in how you relate to them.

Or if you need to receive wine and chocolates to know you are loved, and your partner needs sex regularly, preferably daily, then it is no use providing chocolates to your partner. And this has nothing to do with gender. Either men or women might want the wine or the sex.

So learn what your partner needs to know they are loved. Give them what they need in order that they know they are loved and ask your partner to give you what you need.


Relationship Tips, No 2: It is the little acts of attentiveness that makes a relationship rewarding, and conversely lack of attentiveness leads to a loss of love.

In the beginning of a relationship it is easy to be attentive to our partner. We are so head over heels in love that we want to give them whatever they want. It is easy to know what is needed and important.

Then as we become established in our relationship and busy in our lives it is easy to lose that attentiveness.

Jean was attentive to Geoff’s needs when she let him settle down with a glass of wine before tea after a hard day’s work for half an hour before talking to him about her day.

Geoff was attentive to Jean when it was important to her that a new garden bed be developed that weekend when he would have preferred to read a book. The garden bed was done first.

Lisa was exhausted trying to cope with three pre-school children and found it difficult to organize herself at all. Peter, instead of getting irritated, helped her make a list of groceries, then when they went shopping, kept the children entertained as trailed up and down the supermarket aisles.

Being attentive is not just staring into each others eyes and being available to go to bed - enjoyable as that is. Attentiveness is about being there for each other, and putting one self out for each other to make it better for both of you.


Relationship Tips, No 3: It is lots of little acts of contempt or negativity which can destroy a relationship.

A good relationship requires respect. A relationship turns sour very quickly when respect is dropped and contempt, sarcasm and personal attacks creep in, even when they are very, very subtle.

I read about some research where the researchers found they could predict with considerable certainty whether a marriage would last by the way a couple interacted in a five minute interview. One example was given where the wife of a couple, supposedly much in love, rolled her eyes for a fraction of a second whenever he spoke. It was indicative of her lack respect for him. Something was going on in her mind that made her roll her eyes in contempt. It was apparently outside of her awareness. Their marriage didn’t last.

Neither is it likely to last if one of you constantly puts the other down about some aspect of your life together.

If you find yourself being disrespectful of your partner, then go and do some personal work to get over it.

If you feel disrespected by your partner then also go and do some personal work to make sure they have no grounds to justify it and go develop other excellent relationships elsewhere.


Relationship Tips, No 4: You can’t change your partner. You can only change yourself.

However, and this is the secret, if you change yourself then they have to change what they are doing to respond to this change in you. All relationships are two-way, and sometimes in complicated family or group settings, multiple-way. Every part of a relationship feeds into every other part. So if you change one key aspect then others will change in their response to you.

For more suggestions on how to think about your relationships explore the excellent information in the work of Lee Boucom.

For more relationship tips sign up for our mini-series

HP
23 Jan 2009

 ↑ Back to Top