As they say, falling in love is easy, but staying in love is difficult. True that! because love is not as easy as spelling this four-letter word. While it all starts with love, there are various factors equally come into play as the relationship progresses.
In order to make the relationship work, it is important to pay attention to every element and work effectively towards building a stronger love bond. Know the key elements of a healthy relationship for a solid, loving partnership.
- Transparency
Transparency in a romantic relationship means being honest about your thoughts and not keeping them restricted based on assumptions. It means disclosing your fears, happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety and every other kind of emotion in its truest form. It has two sides, one is being open about your feelings and second, being receptive to your partner’s dreams, wishes and desires. You can bring this change in the relationship by making sure you reveal at least one thing about yourself to each other everyday. This small step will help make an appreciable difference in the relationship.
- Respect
Having respect in the relationship means no matter what times may bring, you will always hold your partner in high regard. There might be moments of disagreements and differences of thoughts. However, you will still love the person and treat them as before. Respect can be demonstrated in various ways in the relationship. For instance, by being mindful of how you communicate, by being reliable, by sticking to your words and by being your authentic self.
- Shared Responsibility
One of the deal-breakers in any relationship is when one partner is over-responsible while the other is under responsible. Always ensure you both share the responsibility, whether it’s physical or emotional. At the same time, there should always be an intent of acting as a team, making mutual decisions, sharing household responsibilities in a manner that honours both. Being responsible also means taking accountability of your own emotions and not holding the other person answerable for the same.
- Intimacy
Intimacy goes well beyond physical attachment, which, as well, is an indispensable part of any romantic relationship. However, there are various aspects of intimacy. Some of them are emotional intimacy where you share your innermost feelings; spiritual intimacy where you share your morals, values, spiritual beliefs; intellectual intimacy where you share things like family planning, budgeting and other conversations of your skills and knowledge; experiential intimacy where you both take time out to share your experiences and so forth. Once you work on different aspects, it will surely help nourish the relationship effectively.
- Communication
As they say, communication is the key. It is the core of any relationship as it helps in understanding your partner and be understood as well. More often than not, communication is confused for talking. However, it basically means connecting with your partner, understanding their needs of growth, certainty and love and fulfilling them. To make it work well, ask your partner how they are doing daily, have relationship check-ins, be an attentive listener and respond wisely.
- Mystery
A relationship is a bumpy ride. Yet, the secret of sustaining love is keeping the mystery alive. Make efforts to tune out work or responsibilities and seclude yourselves from others every once in a while. At the same time, you should also spend some me-time to keep your partner intrigued. Next, do not forget to surprise your partner with something novel at times to keep your partner attentively glued. It could be something as sweet as midnight cake delivery in Noida, Delhi, Pune or anywhere you both reside to something as adventurous as turning a casual drive into a getaway to some unexplored destinations. Keep the surprises coming and dopamine rushing for your partner.
- Trust
Trust builds a fair share of equity in the relationship. For every healthy, romantic bond to prosper, there should be a degree of willingness to be vulnerable. This sets in the stage of ‘protective love’ where the partners go into a protective alliance and connect deeply and being cautious of not hurting the partner, despite knowing their sensitive sides. The fact that your partner knows your weak points and protects it rather than attacking it when the irritations set in builds an enormous amount of trust and securely attaches people to each other.
Taking care of these fundamentals of relationship can help develop deeper, lasting bonds and help maintain the sense of well being of the relationship.