Secrets to Better Relationships

Posted on February 20, 2007 in Love / Relationship by byronb

All people strive for good relationships, whether it is with their parents, siblings, children, lovers, spouses or coworkers.  Some people are even aware of how they strive for this but most are not.

The two key ingredients for building a good relationship are trust and communication. And of these two, trust is the most important. And communication starts from self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge is the beginning of communication.  It’s very hard, in the midst of a relationship, to admit that you have wants.  It’s so very easy to downplay your wants and desires and needs to avoid pressuring your partner.  This even happens in professional relationships.  If you ever find yourself walking on eggshells to avoid saying something that might upset the person you’re in a relationship with, you’ve done this to yourself.

Ultimately, what happens with this is that your subconscious will attempt to get what you’re denying yourself and will start using tone of voice, word choice and inflections to try to manipulate the people you’re relating to into giving you what you want but won’t acknowledge.

From their side, they’ll accede a few times, which will tell your subconscious that this is a successful strategy – and before you’re even aware of it, you’ll be doing push-me/pull-you psychological warfare tactics suitable for prisoner interrogations on the people you love, which will cause them to stop trusting you.

This habit and pattern is hard to break once you’ve gotten started in it.  It’s even harder to repair the damage if it’s gone on very long. Trust, once lost, is hard to regain.

The key to beating this pattern is to sit back and look at the things in the relationship that scare you.  And to explain to your partner that they scare you and to go over those fears one step at a time, in detail.

One common fear in a relationship is a fear of being replaced, a fear of being abandoned. This is particularly common in the early phases of a relationship, after the first blush of infatuation has run its course.  This manifests itself with one partner or the other being constantly “needy” or “clingy”, which will, if not addressed, manifest itself in the pattern of behavior described above.  It’s not hard to see this turn into full-blown jealousy, particularly if you see your partner giving someone else the behavior patterns you want to see turned on you.  Eventually, a common ground is established, trust is built and a foundation for a lifelong partnership is made.

Ways to combat these fears boil down to being up front and honest with your partner about what you fear. It’s a scary thing to confront these issues because, by admitting what you’re afraid of, you’re letting your insecurities and doubts show to the one person you’ve let get close enough to you to do you serious emotional harm.

Once you’ve set your fears on the table for cross examination, the next step is to set boundaries.  Know what your boundaries are, discuss them with your partner and discuss his or hers, as well.  Respect and negotiate your boundaries carefully and review them on a regular basis. As you grow closer, some “thou shalt nots” in relationships may soften or harden.

And above all else, to thine own self be true.

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