You might find yourself with a death in the family, a financial hardship or a crisis that keeps you up at night, it is these hard times that can make your relationship stronger. It may seem hard at first. It is the hard times that can bring the best out of people.
Every relationship experiences some hard times. It is the stressful occurrences that can bring your relationship to a new level of strengthening your love and understanding for one another.
Hard times can create a great opportunity for your commitment for one other to be unshaken and unmoveable to bring you closer together. In order, for you to strengthen your relationship, there must be communication involved. Communicating is crucial to the relationship. Having the ability to communicate freely and on-going will build a stronger relationship. Here are five ways you can keep it together through the hard times.
Talk It Out
Telling your partner how you feel is vital to your relationships. This expression should be done out of respect. Speak to them out of love, the same way you want to be spoken to. This way will better receive from them. Telling your partner how you feel will benefit the relationships. There is no way they will know how you feel if you don’t tell them, most likely cannot read your mind. The worst you want to do is be demanding or condescending to where you are more like a dictator rather than an equal partner.
Avoiding any hard topics can create more stress in your life. Burying your feelings underneath only will explode up like a raging bull. By talking it out, it allows you to open up and become more intimate with your feelings which in return draws you closer to your partner. Once you grow closer, you will form a new level of appreciation for one other.
Validate Their Feelings
Being heard and be present in a relationship is essential to its well-being. Not having your voice heard in your relationship is just as bad as the old saying that many of us grew up with hearing, “Children are to be seen and not heard.” When you shut the door on their voice, you loss great opportunities to grow closer and build a stronger lasting relationship.
Everyone wants to be treated as number one, especially in their relationships. Validating and respecting their feelings will give a sense of belonging. This validation is done by listening. Once you take the time to listen and not anticipate your rebuttal, this will allow you to pay attention and be more involved in the conversation. Validating one’s feelings do not mean you have to agree with them, but you should respect them. Remember that being right is not always right in every situation.
Agree To Disagree
There is no person the same. We are all made up different which makes us unique. We might have some very common similarity, but at the end of the day, we are different. Being different doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get alone, it is the opposite. Being different should draw us together to want to learn from each other.
Agreeing to disagree and acknowledge different opinions is a must in relationships. Agree to come to a solution where you both can be happy. Having patience and understanding go hand and hand with resolving and conflict. Don’t allow yourself to fall into the trap that things have to be done one way only. If there is a need to apologize, quickly apologize. Apologizing is a sign of strength, and it clears the air of any false perfection.
Take A Break
It can be challenging to hold a conversation if the discussion is not moving towards a solution. Instead of the constant back and forth dialogue only feeling more like a heated tennis match where no one is winning, take a break. It is essential to take a break especially if you find yourself still not on the same page.
Taking a break will give you and your partner a better chance to reflect on the discussion. Most of the time we can find ourselves only seeing one side of the conversation, which it just gets impossible to see another way. Taking a break does not have to be wrong. It gives you and your partner the opportunity to see a different perspective.
Laying The Foundation
Remember why you are with your partner. Remember what drawn you together. Remember the best moments together such as how you met, the first date, the first time you said “I love you,” and the moment you knew this was the person for you. It is easy to lose focus on the crucial things due to the negativity that can occur in our lives but looking at the positivity can revive the relationship to a new level of togetherness.
Weighing the good memories verse the conflicts will determine how serious you are committed to fighting for your relationship. There are certain situations where you may feel like your back is against the wall and the only decision is to give up. But more often than not, once you see and remember the foundation of your relationship, you can decide that it is worth fighting for your relationship.