Recently I was talking to a primary school teacher about the New Year’s resolutions their pupils were making. Along with the more predictable ones about being more helpful at home and keeping their bedroom tidy, one of them said ‘My resolution for 2016 is to ride my bicycle without stabilisers’. Of course the teacher encouraged her to do just that, and I am sure that will be an achievement before too long.
But what, I wonder, is the equivalent in terms of our relationships? And here the exact opposite is just the case. At the start of every New Year we at Coupleworks get a stream of new clients all saying that the Christmas period has been particularly stressful or that they have resolved to really try to do something about the parts of their relationship which aren’t working.
Talking a bit further with them it all too often emerges that they have been trying to run their relationship ‘without stabilisers’ – without the very things that nurture and support all relationships. Leave them out and sadly and inevitably, love grows cold and can even die.
So these are my 5 top tips for nurturing your relationship as we enter 2016. There is nothing particularly new or innovative about them – it’s just that these are some of the things, which help people to flourish together.
1. Make time to be together – 2015 may have seen your family changing shape. Or one of you may have got a new job with increasing demands, or it may be that your present job requires more to be done with fewer resources. Whatever the case resolve to have more time to be together – put some dates in the diary to do something fun, go out for a meal or take a walk in the park.
2. Make some plans and make sure that you are sharing some common goals. Don’t assume that your partner wants the same things as you both did five years ago. Talk about your aims in life and what you are looking forward to – find out where they are different and where they overlap and you can share them together.
3. Talk about what makes you feel closer to each other. This can be different for different people. For some they feel closer when having sex, for others it is sharing an activity together or talking through emotional experiences. Respect and accommodate those differences.
4. Think about the things you value and respect about your partner and focus on these rather than the things that irritate and annoy you.
5. Remember to show your appreciation of your partner to them from time to time. It is all too easy to get dragged down into the humdrum of life and take each other for granted. We all flourish in an environment in which we experience love and affection rather than indifference or negativity.
Let 2016 be a year in which your relationship grows and flourishes.
Sarah Fletcher