In order to attain a stability in your relationship, there are a few important approaches you need to understand and work towards bettering yourself at it -

1. Stop keeping a score card for every time your partner does something that aggravates negative feelings within you for them. Usually, people tend to fight and argue about incidences that took place months or years ago. You need to understand that its important to let go.

Why is it not healthy?

Because you’re simply deviating from the current topic of discussion and making them feel guilty for something that happened in the past which has very little control over your present situation. And this in turn leads to proving that ‘I am right’ and ‘you are wrong’. In the initial phase, this is quite natural because you are in the process of getting to know each other but eventually when you are in tune with each other’s temperaments, I recommend you avoid draining your energy by penetrating into everything that is not right and instead start focusing on everything that is wonderful.

Can you now start counting your blessings? Start keeping tabs of everything that is having a positive impact in your relationship.

1. The second most important aspect of relationship that I am going to discuss is about communication, which many people don’t really engage into or engage a little too much. They can’t strive a balance. There are different communication styles that people use in daily lives, from aggressive, passive, passive aggressive, to assertive. Usually, in relationships people either tend to be passive aggressive or aggressive where they either are outright and loud or they keep dropping hints for the other person to understand. And often times, it gets very ugly. Communication styles are developed by various behavior patterns, and the purpose of communication is to fill the gap that will improve better understanding of each other.

Unfortunately, people have got it all wrong by simply using different styles of communication at different situations which often leads to conflicts and misunderstanding. One of the most effective and healthy communication style is the Assertive style of communication.

Assertive communication is a wonderful way of communicating, not just in relationships but also in general, at your workplace, with your friends and family members. Its extremely significant to adapt an assertive way of communication where you stand up for your personal rights, believe that you have a choice and know that you don’t want to feel a certain way, you state your feelings very clearly without sounding rude, you end up respecting the other person’s feelings, have a congruency between what you feel, what you think and what you say and most importantly you become an active listener, where you listen to the other person without any pre-conceived notion, any biases because you understand that everyone has a story.

1. And finally, stop blaming your partner for your emotions – I have witnessed this in a lot of relationships. Let’s say that you have had a rough day at work and your partner is not being very attentive to you and you also want to spend time at home and watch a movie but your partner already has some plans with their friends.

How do you feel? Hurt? Frustrated? Miserable? Ignored? Do you feel like your partner doesn’t understand you and is being so hard on you? Do you feel like your partner is not supporting you emotionally?

From now on, before lashing out at your partner, ask yourself this question –

How can I expect my partner to instinctively be supportive and make me feel better? Is it right of me to give him the responsibility to support me emotionally without me having asked for it, but deep down expecting my partner to understand?

Its very easy to blame our partners for our emotional instability and this is a very good example of a poor personal space and poor boundaries.

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