Say a great sculpture sat in your lounge and years after you bought it, it racked up so much dust that your friends wondered what it was still doing there. Would you..
a. Dump it, or
b. Dust it?
I guess you see where I’m going. With time, every relationship gets dusty my friend. But no matter how ugly it looks, throwing it away isn’t always the smartest thing to do. Before you take out your duster and follow my instructions, there’s one thing I want to make clear.
The Unavoidable Thing About Improving Anything
…is that it takes action. For example, even washing machines require you to manually feed your laundry. Unless you take an initial action to see change in your relationship, it just won’t happen. You can’t sit and hope or cry and hope. You can’t just read what I’m about to show you and close this window.
I know you’ve closed and forgotten about articles like this many times before, but I want to believe you keep opening them for a reason. So today, to achieve something different, you’re gonna have to do things differently. Ready to take action?
“Doing nothing and doing things incompletely are one and the same.” -My Dad.
How To Revive Your Relationship: 5 Simple Tips
With the exception of the first one, do these in any order.
1. Refuse To Be Negative
Your relationship is not exactly where you want it today because one of you sees more clearly the things that don’t work than the ones that do. And I can’t fully blame that person. To preserve life, we humans pay more attention to the bad stuff.
That’s why you’d be wise not to increase your partner’s negative memory bank, because it could break the new relationship you’re trying to build.
- If you’re going to point out a flaw, open with a compliment and close with one.
- If you’re going to complain, make sure you first point out the silver lining to yourself. If the silver lining outweighs your complaint, kill that complaint.
- Tell your partner why you believe in them, not why you don’t.
- See why things will work, not why they wouldn’t.
2. Establish An Open Talk Day
Once a month, select a day where you can both openly tell each other where you see your relationship at the moment, what you like and what could improve.
In our everyday rush, we all develop shortcuts to deal with issues or voice concerns. And although we don’t say things the way we should, we still expect our partners to do things the way they should. Unfair with a big U. Instead of relegating important conversations to never, pick a date and be open minded about what you will hear.
Remember, it’s not an opportunity to fight, but an opportunity to understand and be understood.
3. Write Her A Weekly Letter.
Imagine if once a week you received a mail about how awesome you are, about what you did right that week, about why you will do even better and about why the world is blessed to have you. How would you feel about the person who week after week sent you such a letter?
You can be that person for your lover.
Pick a pen or your keyboard and tell your lover what she did right this week, what she did that really made you happy (you have to find something) and why you believe in her. I’ve learned early in life that people become what you say of them. So if you want your lover to become anything positive, see and call that thing in her now.
The more you water her self esteem, the more she will draw to you (all these work for both sexes).
4. Adopt A Joint Routine
When a routine breaks, our mind often does everything to restore it. The way you can use that to your relationship’s advantage is to develop routines that will draw you together. Why do you think couples have date nights? Or movie nights? Or all the cheesy things that seem to make no sense on the surface?
Choose your cheesy, stick it to your relationship and watch your bonds grow stronger.
5. Build Something Together
My wife often talks of the best marriage advice she ever received. It goes like this: “Build something together that you’re both passionate about so that when romance wanes, that thing will keep you at the same place long enough for the romance to eventually find you back when it returns.
Many long lasting couples have a mission or a lifelong project. For example Brad & Angelina, Bill & Melinda Gates, the couple that runs the deli across the corner…. What is your couple’s life project?What is that thing that is so much bigger than you two that a separation wouldn’t be worth it? Are you guys working towards something or building anything together?
If you want your marriage to last a lifetime, you might want to get onto it soon.
Rowing your gondola,
Pat.
