Being in a relationship can be hard work, and reams of advice have been written on how to keep your relationship healthy. In the end, though, they all come down to a few basic principles. You have to talk, you have to listen, and you have to be willing to try new things. While easy to understand in theory, they can be incredibly difficult to do in practice. Relationships take work, everyone knows this, but it’s not going to just take work for a moment or take work for a short time, it’s going to take lots of work, and it’s going to keep taking work for the duration.
Try New Things
Being in a relationship is all about being willing to try new things and experiment. Try out the things that your partner enjoys. Even if you don’t end up enjoying it yourself, you can at least have a better understanding of what they enjoy about it. Whether you’re trying out a new hobby, or going to a sports event that you’ve never been to before, or living things up in the bedroom with Scream Cream, it never hurts to try something new, and it’s always more fun to try new things with your best friend.
Talk
It’s a point that’s been made before and will be made again, but in order to get what you want out of a relationship, you have to be able to communicate what you want from that relationship. Talking can be the hardest part of being in a relationship because it requires you to be open and honest about some of the things you’re most afraid of or sensitive about, whether it’s your hopes and dreams or your money woes. The hard work is often done internally, working through your own issues and figuring out how to voice them, and letting yourself be honest with the person you’re with.
Listen
Talking is only half the battle, though because of course you have to listen as well, and actually hear what your partner says, and what they mean when they say it. Sometimes this can be even harder than talking because, in addition to just listening to what your partner is saying, you have to understand that there might be things they’re not saying because they’re also having to struggle with their own inability to talk about certain things. Once they are able to communicate, you have to be willing to hear what they’re saying and then adjust your behavior accordingly. That might mean that you now have to try something new and so the cycle begins all over again.
The thing is that it isn’t a one-time trick or an easy piece of advice that then fixes everything in a relationship It’s not one trick or one thing that’s going to “fix” anything, it’s a system that becomes stable over time. The trick is finding something that works for you and for your partner, not just now, but moving on together into the future.