7 Ways to Practice Relationship Self-Care to Dramatically Improve Your Life

Use these 7 tips to make your relationships work for you, instead of against you

We all might know that humans are social animals and that relationships are important for our well-being.

What you might not know is, that when you socially isolate yourself from your relationships, you experience the same risks that come with smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity.

On the other hand, if you take care of your relationships you can expect more happiness, resilience, cognitive capacity, and higher quality of life. It also reduces unhealthy mental qualities, like greed, jealousy, and egocentricity, and enhances healthy qualities like love, joy, and generosity.

This means that maintaining your relationships can actually make or break your life.

Taking note of our relationships and properly maintaining them, therefore, becomes an important part of our self-care. Here are a few ways how to implement this in your daily self-care.

The relational domain of self-care

Butler et al. (2019) state that relationships are an important part of self-care, which they call relationship self-care. They state that it refers to the “efforts we make to maintain and enhance our interpersonal connections to others.”

These connections can mean a variety of different things. For example, you can think of your close relatives and friends. However, these connections can also be pets, extended family, old friends, and newer acquaintances. You can also think of peers from school or work, or any other group you are a part of.

Now you might be thinking — so.. I have to take care of my connections to everybody I know?

Well.. not exactly. Of course, it is good practice to maintain proper relations with all the people in your life.

However, Butler et al. (2019) put their focus on relationships that we interact with regularly, that are meaningful, or that greatly enrich our lives. These are also relationships that we can turn to in times of need, or relationships that can develop into a meaningful connection.

So it is up to us to decide which of our relationships falls under one of these criteria. These are the relationships we can put more focus, time, and effort in as part of our relationship self-care.

Why you should care about your relationships

Your relationships can be a huge boost for your well-being and happiness. It’s not for nothing it should be included in our self-care.

It can help you live longer, be more physically active, provide you with support in times of need, and help you experience love, joy, and happiness.

It also helps you buffer life stress and its emotional impact.

The following three aspects of relationships help you achieve these benefits:

• The size of your social support network
• The instrumental support you receive (e.g. practical help, especially in times of need)
• And emotional support (e.g. care, trust, and empathy received from others)

To experience the benefits of relationships, we must work on these three aspects. We can do this by practicing relationship self-care.

“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” — Audrey Hepburn

How to practice relationship self-care

Butler et al. (2019) identify a number of ways in which you can practice relationship self-care.

• Intentionally working to increase your social support network. You can do this by making effort to meet new people or join new social groups. This increases the number of people that are available or able to provide help if needed, and it helps decrease social isolation.
• Mindful prioritization of your relationships with spouses, partners, children, and other family members. This means actively prioritizing quality time with your partners, children, and other family members. It means taking into account that you spend enough time, energy, and effort on these relationships. Even if your schedule is packed. Making time for these relationships is vital for the well-being of these relationships and your own well-being.
• Efforts to sustain or deepen important friendships (or reconnect to valuable relationships from the past). Friendships are also important relationships to take care of. Efforts to sustain or deepen friendships can include regularly checking in with each other (be it with a call or a text), spending time together, sharing meaningful experiences, participating in fun activities together (like going to the movies or cooking together), and having meaningful conversations together where you are vulnerable and honest with each other. This can all help to deepen important friendships, or even reconnect with old, valuable friends from the past.
• Identifying those you can trust in difficult times. When difficult times come around, we could all use some help. Identifying who you can turn to when you are struggling, and who will be responsive and sensitive in your time of need, can prove valuable when you are in crisis.
• Identifying beneficial relationships and draining relationships. Another thing you can do when identifying your relationships is to take stock of which relationships fulfill you and which don’t. Relationships can build up your well-being, or tear it down. So it is important to know which ones are contributing to your well-being and happiness, so you know which relationships to put your time, energy, and efforts in.
• Helping others. Getting support from others has many benefits for us, but giving support can also provide a lot of happiness to us. It can reduce greed, jealousy, and egocentricity while enhancing our love, joy, and generosity. It can also increase our happiness, and our mental, physical and social well-being. It can even lower mortality for those who provide it! However, it is important to note that you only experience the benefits of giving help when you do it out of pleasure, and not out of duty or obligation.

Social media as part of relationship self-care?

Social media offers countless opportunities to connect with people online. It is easy, often affordable, and can be done right off your couch.

However, it might not be such a good solution for our relationship self-care, after all.

Research shows that the more someone uses social media, the less emotional support they feel they receive, the lower their academic achievements, the less they participate in offline social community activities, and the more difficulties they experience in their relationships.

So while social media can be a good way to stay connected to your relationships, whether by texting, FaceTiming, or sending funny memes, it shouldn't be the main way of socializing and maintaining your relationships. That can even lead to worse relationships.

So while social media can be a good extra add-on to stay in touch and practice relationship self-care, it shouldn’t be the main way you connect and take care of your relationships.

“There are things that people say that hurt my feelings or whatever, especially with social media right now. It can be the most amazing thing, and it can also be the most negative and detrimental thing.” — Zendaya

Final thoughts

Relationships are important to our well-being. They can improve our physical and mental well-being, they can make us happy, help us enjoy our lives, and they can even help us live longer.

This happens through the size of our social support network, and the instrumental support and emotional support we receive from it.

That is why it’s important to take good care of the relationships in our lives and to practice relationship self-care.

We can do this by:

• Intentionally working to increase our social support network.
• Prioritizing our partners, children, and family members.
• Putting in efforts to sustain or deepen our friendships.
• Identifying people who can support us in difficult times.
• Identifying fulfilling relationships and draining relationships.
• Helping others.
• Using social media as an add-on for connecting with our relationships, but not as the main and only way of connecting.

How do you implement relationship self-care in your (daily) life?

Let me know in the comments below!

With love,

Jelena

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