Six Easy Ways to Improve Your Relationship
When it comes to strengthening a relationship, many people are searching for big and bold ways to improve their connection. In reality, the quality of your marriage comes not from grand, romantic gestures but from the tiny ways in which you interact with each other, day in and day out. If you want to feel more like a team, stop thinking about how long a bouquet of flowers will keep you on your partner’s good side (though tokens of appreciation are almost always a good thing!) and start thinking about how the microinteractions between the two of you shape your everyday lives.
Wondering what to pay attention to when it comes to your romantic relationship? The following suggestions come from experts who have studied what contributes to marital satisfaction and longevity. Many of these skills and tips are taught by couples therapists in the early stages of couples counseling. You can start implementing these concepts into your life today and see benefits immediately! If you realize that you and your partner could use some help with implementing these ideas into your life, reach out today to learn more about couples therapy with me and how it can help.
Change the way you listen to your partner.
When your partner comes home and starts talking to you about their day, how do you respond to them: do you really listen to their words and pay attention to their body language, or do you brush them off to attend to your own tasks? How we listen to each other is incredibly important to a sense of strong connection and mutual understanding. One of the most important pieces of couples therapy 101 that you can use to improve your relationship is that truly listening to someone requires putting away our egos and defensiveness. It means that when you listen to someone, you believe that what they are telling you is what they are truly experiencing. You listen to understand, not to defend yourself. If your person starts telling you how they felt in a situation, rather than jumping in with why you did what you did or how you feel, you give them the space to express themselves and empathize with their feelings. You ask clarifying questions to make sure you are really getting it. Then, later on, you will get a chance to express your feelings, and your partner can reciprocate in this very same way!
Change the way you speak to your partner.
How you talk to your partner is also super important - the way you express yourself can make or break a relationship. First, you want to start by using “I” statements when expressing your feelings instead of the more blaming “you” statements - saying something like “I felt unimportant when I noticed that the load of laundry I need for work is still unwashed” versus “You are always forgetful and dismissive, and I do not know why I ever asked you to do this for me.” An “I” statement has you taking control of your emotional responses (which, heads up, can feel vulnerable) instead of using a blaming and shaming approach. Attacking your partner is not effective in getting you what you want and builds up resentment and disconnection between you. Instead, treat each other with respect and see how that far takes you.
Turn towards your partner.
Drs. John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman call this concept “turning toward a bid for connection.” The recently deceased Dr. Sue Johnson used the acronym A.R.E. (are you accessible, responsive, and engaged with me?) as a means of turning toward each other. All three of our most esteemed leaders in couples therapy are referencing the simple but powerful need to just be engaged with our spouses. Connection, safety, and intimacy are built when we have a culture of being attuned to our partner and not ignoring them or their needs. In the Gottmans’ framework, we can either turn toward, turn away from, or turn against our partner in any given moment; as often as we possibly can, we want to turn toward our partner, which means we acknowledge them when they speak to us in a neutral to positive manner and when they are otherwise indicating interest in us via other kinds of body language. Sue would lean into the questions “Are you there for me?” and “Can I find you when I need you?” to further illustrate this concept.
Learn how your partner wants to be loved.
The five love languages are a popular concept in the general public, and though I do not think they can capture all the solutions to marital troubles, they are helpful for many people. The idea behind the love languages is that we can learn how our partner wants us to show our love and affection for them and vice versa. Additionally, we can tune into how we tend to want to show love and affection to others and evaluate how much compatibility there has been in a partnership. For instance, if you lean toward gift-giving but know that your spouse loves hearing you talk about your admiration for their passion in pursuing their favorite hobby, you can aim to increase how often you are saying that in comparison with how often you bring them home a little treat from the store.
Eliminate scorekeeping.
My clients have frequently heard me say that once you start keeping score, you have both already lost. Scorekeeping introduces the harmful idea that something you do is justified because of what your partner has done, and once this cycle starts, it becomes hard to stop. A relationship is not just “me and me”; a relationship is also a “we,” meaning that it is more than just two individuals who live life together. Your relationship itself becomes an entity, and you have to nurture it to feel strong and safe with each other. I have seen firsthand how hard it can be to quit keeping score, but one action you can take is related to the fundamental attribution error, which is the human tendency to judge others based solely on their behavior or situational factors and think of ourselves differently and based on intent when we do the same thing. You can make it routine to pause when you start to judge what your partner is doing and give them the benefit of the doubt - what is the most generous interpretation of what is happening here? Did they intend to hurt you? Then, with the help of your therapist, you can work on expressing your concerns in a healthy manner instead of jumping to scorekeeping.
Cultivate an atmosphere of appreciation.
Sometimes, I get pushback around this idea of being generous with words of appreciation; people will say, we are both adults, so why do we have to praise each other like children to form a healthy relationship? Research shows, though, that fostering a culture of appreciation and gratitude in your partnership really pays off. Feeling liked and thanked goes a long way to protecting yourselves against contempt and avoidance. Showing appreciation is really just an effective way to communicate and increase warmth and joy with your partner. What do you have to lose by taking a few extra seconds to throw in some kind acknowledgement toward your partner?
