The best ways to strengthen your relationship
Is your partnership feeling a little shaky? These are some of the best ways to strengthen your relationship.
by: E.B. Johnson
Have you and your partner questioned your relationship? When life challenges us, it can cause our relationships to weaken in a number of ways. We begin to drift away from one another and can find conflict at an all-time high. Getting things back on track isn’t easy, but it is possible when we take focused action to bring ourselves back together in love and connection.
Strength comes as the result of challenge.
Bodybuilders aren’t born with rippling muscles and chiseled physiques. They get their bodies as the result of focused effort and hard work. We could say the same about our relationships. Partnerships aren’t made strong just for existing in them for a certain amount of time. Those with the strongest relationships work hard to bring intentional and mindfulness into their coupling. That’s how they make it through thick and thin, and we can learn to do the same.
When the cracks show, we can choose to strengthen our partnership or walk away.
If you and your partner have drifted apart, you can work together to bring your relationship back. By acknowledging what’s going on, we empower ourselves to fix it. Rather than allowing all our love and all of our effort to go down the drain, we can step up to the plate and become best friends once again. Putting out shared goals in focus, we become better equipped to strengthen ourselves on a personal level so we can better thrive as a couple. Do you want to improve your relationship and the bond you share? Take steps early to bring your love back around.
Knowing when your relationship needs strengthening.
Has your relationship weakened over the years? Have you hit some roadblocks that have driven you apart? We are responsible for nourishing our relationships and fixing them when things go wrong. When your partnership becomes overwhelmed by stress or filled with avoidance and conflict — it’s time to perk up and pay attention to the warning signs and what’s going on.
Overwhelmed by stress
We are living through stressful times. There’s a lot on the table and a lot that’s expected from each one of us every day. If you’ve both become overwhelmed by the pressure and responsibilities in your life — it can be hard to stay focused on one another. This leads to inevitable drift and collisions with conflict that become a struggle to balance. We need peace in order to bring our relationships back together.
Avoiding one another
Have you and your partner started avoiding one another whenever you can? Do you spend most of your time away from home on your own? Do you go out of your way to miss one another even when you are home? You may come up with excuses or throw yourself into work — all in an attempt to get away from one another. Physical and emotional intimacy tends to dry up in this stage as well.
Family-focus only
Are you and your partner in the process of starting a family? It’s an exciting time, but one in which we must stay mindful. There is such a thing as becoming overly focused on your growing family. If the only time you interact with your partner is in the name of your family or children — you could find yourself with irreversible problems. Basing your entire identity as a couple on your children leads to divides and collapse.
Walking on eggshells
What is the mood like in your relationship? Are you both comfortable and willing to be open? Or are things awkward and (often) volatile? When you tiptoe around each other, there are issues that need to be addressed. You may know something is wrong but are unwilling (or unable) to address it. Instead, the two of you walk on eggshells around all the issues and avoid setting one another off or addressing the cracks that are showing up in our partnerships.
Losing the will to argue
The weaknesses in our relationships aren’t always demonstrated by conflict. Sometimes it is the quiet that we have to be concerned about. Have you and your partner stopped talking? Have you lost the will to even fight with one another? When there’s no communication — there’s a problem. We should always seek to move toward one another in connection. That means addressing the issues and reaching out to express our needs and appreciation for our relationship, too.
Going on autopilot
It’s always important to be aware of the dynamics in our relationships and how they are playing out. While it’s natural to find our partnerships more or less active at different times, we should never go on “autopilot”. To go on autopilot is to have checked out. The relationship becomes stagnant and numbing, and you and your partner grow more and more disillusioned with one another by the day.
Total lack of trust
Would you say that your relationship lacks in trust? Losing trust in one another is serious and happens from several events. Your partner might cheat on you, or they may just disappoint you time-and-time again. As you learn that they never meet your expectations, you come to expect failure as the only guaranteed expectation. This total lack of trust is toxic and drives a wedge right into the heart of the partnership.
The best ways to strengthen your relationship.
If your relationship has cracked or weakened over the years, then you can take action as partners to pick up the pieces and put it to rights. By creating happy memories together and refocusing on both ourselves and what we want as a couple — we can get back to the root of what drew us together, and back to the core of our love.
1. Become best friends again
It’s hard to maintain a strong and faithful relationship when you and your partner aren’t even friends. Friendship is a crucial part of romantic intimacy, but so many of us lose sight of this friendship as we get bogged down in the pressure of daily living. If your goal is to bring back that early sense of strength and vitality to your partnership, then you need to remember to have fun with one another and enjoy the ride you’ve built.
Become best friends again to strengthen your relationship. Do new things together and do them regularly (and intentionally). Have fun creating memories together. Remember to laugh together just as much as you cry and fight and struggle.
Consciously bringing joy back into your relationship is one of the best ways to repair and strengthen it. It bonds us and helps us to see and recall the light in one another, even when things get challenging. Instead of spending all your time focusing on all the fixes you need to make and all the stress that’s lingering about, spend some time having fun with each other again. Create memories that bring you back together in the dark moments and hold on to those memories when the cracks show.
2. Focus on the binding forces
No matter how hard you work to create a “perfect” relationship, things are going to go wrong. Your spouse is going to make mistakes, and you’re also going to screw up from time-to-time. It’s easy to focus on everything that goes wrong, but that’s not how we strengthen our partnerships. Do you want to get back on track with your partner? Do you want to believe in your relationship again? Then you need to move away from what went wrong, and focus on what you’re doing right together.
Instead of looking around at all the problems and mistakes, step back and spend some time refocusing on the forces that bring you together. What shared goals and responsibilities keep you working toward the same future? There are always similarities we can lean into and focus on when we feel our bonds weakening.
Looking at mutual goals and commitments lends itself as a powerful bonding agent. It can help us put aside petty arguments and acknowledge what it is that brought us together in the first place. Do you share a family? Do you share a business or a home? When there’re bigger things to focus on, it can bring us out of our funk and remind us of the things that united us in the beginning. Remember the forces that bind you, and working together becomes easier.
3. Allow yourselves to grow apart
Our society has created this narrative that romantic intimacy comes with obsessive physical and emotional proximity. We smother each other and completely lose ourselves when we commit to a relationship. This is not how we build health and strength, however. When you cling to your partner, you leave no room for either one of you to grow as people, and this growth is absolutely crucial if you want to be the best potential person you can be for your future and your relationship.
As Khalil Gibran said, there must be space in your togetherness. You have to allow yourselves to grow apart as much as you grow together. That space must be filled with personal growth and self-discovery . Even as we get closer to our partners, we have to branch out to become more fully ourselves.
It’s impossible to be a good partner without being a good individual. Your partner won’t make you happy if you’re not already happy for yourself. They won’t cure the pain of your past if you’re not acting to cure that pain for yourself first. We have to heal on our own. We have to find what fulfills us and makes us happy on our own. You need social circles and experiences that allow you to build independence. Build a strong individual life so that you can come back to your partner fulfilled and ready to work.
4. Consciously ask for your needs
More often than not, we find that our relationships begin to crumble because we stop speaking up. It’s impossible for your partner to know what you need unless you tell them. Likewise, you can’t provide for their needs or help them if you don’t know what’s important to them. To strengthen your relationship, both of you need to commit to consciously asking for what you want (and clarifying any expectations that you have).
Be conscious about asking your partner for what you need. Reflect on your love language, then express those love languages to one another. Acknowledge them and allow them to speak with and provide for one another. Be intentional. It’s okay to express what you want.
When you become more conscious of your needs as a couple, you become more aligned and-in tune with one another. This lends itself to comfort, and the ability to open yourselves up to one another in greater trust and security. It’s okay to tell your partner that you need something from them. It’s okay for them to do the same with you. If you want to strengthen your relationship, be conscious about asking for your needs and the things you want.
5. Find a natural flow to things
Every relationship has its own natural flow, but many of us ignore this in the pursuit to meet society’s superficial expectations of love and connection. To get your relationship back where you want it to be, you have to get your foot off the gas and relieve the pressure your partnership is under. What is the natural flow to things in your relationship? Figure that out and you and your partner can re-discover a comfort that strengthens your commitment to one another.
Find your natural flow and settle into it. You don’t need to rush your relationship into this milestone or that milestone. Allow things to progress as they need to. Stop forcing what you think you want into the middle of your partnerships. It’s a mutual space you both have to build.
What’s your natural flow? What is your relationships’s natural pace? Look around and really pay attention to your needs and the needs of your partner too. Relieve a lot of that pressure my getting your feet off the ground and putting things into coast for a while. When we’re with the right person, the whole ride is enjoyable — no matter where it takes us. Don’t squeeze your relationship into a box it doesn’t fit in. Allow it to stand as it is and love it for the love it brings you.
Putting it all together…
As our relationships are tested by the years that go by, we can find them weakening in places where they once were strong. It’s a natural process, but one that many of us don’t know how to navigate. Rather than throwing in the towel, however, we have to stand up and work. Our relationships can be salvaged — even when they weaken — by being honest about what’s going wrong and taking committed action to get things back on track.
Become best friends again. Get back into the habit of having fun and spending intentionally fun time together. Creating happy memories is how we reinforce the love we feel for one another. Look at the things that bind you. What similarities brought you together? What future goal drives you forward as a team? Allow yourselves to grow apart, and in this space seek personal growth and fulfillment. The happier we are as individuals, the more we offer as partners. Look inward. What do you really need and want from your partnerships? Communicate these things to your partner and allow them to communicate their needs to you. Find your natural flow and embrace the natural season your relationship finds itself in. You don’t need to rush and you don’t need to force things. Be happy being present together and allow life to come at you as it will.
- Hira, S., & Overall, N. (2010). Improving intimate relationships: Targeting the partner versus changing the self. Journal Of Social And Personal Relationships, 28(5), 610–633. doi: 10.1177/0265407510388586
