How to Make Relationships Work

Many couples go into a marriage thinking that love will see them through anything the future may hold. While this idea is romantically appealing and is fueled by the passion of love in bloom, it falls short of ensuring a happy and productive marriage. Go ahead and take the first step in working out a relationship without worrying about who is in the right. Don’t depend on any person and don’t let the other person depend on you.

The phenomenal flux of changes in every sphere of our lives since the last century has redefined the role of human relationships. Social revolutions such as the women’s lib, the cult of the individual, and even the human potential movement have re-patterned the basic premises of relationships. A good relationship today is not one that just lasts but one that coexists with self-respect, individuality and the need to grow. Relationships require work and care to endure and, with time, to evolve in ways that keep both partners fulfilled. Such labors are well worth the effort, though, since a lasting marital relationship is the most rewarding bond in life.
• Don’t try too hard to convince the other person of your love. Love and trust yourself more. This will relax your love defenses and enable you to give yourself totally to relationship.
• Don’t question the other person’s love all the time.
• Feel the oneness of the universe. Step beyond the ‘me first’ conflicts that spoil relationships. This would help you be complete within yourself.
• Don’t use your relationships to fulfill your expectations.
• Know yourself. Analyze the cause of your reactions.
• Acknowledge the other person as an individual. Grow and let grow.
• In a conflicting relationship, check where you went wrong rather than where the other person failed. Listen to each other. Communication strengthens the foundation of a relationship.
For it to thrive successfully, marriage counselors and psychologists, also, stress the need for this kind of “space” within a couple’s relationship. An individual in a marriage shouldn’t be a repository of one’s own needs and desires. In fact both the people involved should be totally committed to their relationship. They must be ready to take responsibility for themselves as well as the relationship.
A resulting happy marriage is one in which both parents deeply love and care for each other. It is not a marriage in which parents stay together just for the sake of the children. If there is constant fighting between the parents, a child’s insecurities will deepen further, and it is far better to separate than to subject the child to a constant battle at home.
Similarly, a happy marriage is not one in which the wife is a doormat to the husband and continues in the marriage despite abuses being hurled at her all day from husband or in-laws. In order to get others, including your children, to respect you, you will need to first respect yourself, and allowing yourself to be treated badly is the biggest disservice you can do to yourself, and to your family.
A strong, happy marriage leads to secure, well-balanced children. Of course, this is not to say that children living with single parents grow up to be maladjusted individuals such children can be equally focused and happy as children and as adults. However, needless to say, children do benefit when their parents are happily married, which translates to mean happy in their marriage.