How To Improve Your Relationship

In my long experience of married life, If there any common denominators to the breakdown of every single personal relationship, they are nagging and negative criticism. If you are guilty of either, or worse still both, stop now before it’s too late.

Your partner is NOT your very own little mini me who does everything just the way you like it. Nor are you their’s.

They are NOT your little lap dog to bring and fetch and carry at your every command. Nor are you their’s.

If you don’t like the way your partner has done something, like wash the dishes, find a way to communicate that to your partner in a positive way, or do it yourself.

If the house has not been tidied in your absence to your liking, think how best you can bring that to your partner’s attention.

Try not to be overly negative in your criticism. Or, do it yourself and show your partner how you do things and why.

Constant nagging and complaining and negative criticism never ever made anything better. Never, full stop.

Once you embark on upon a regime of nagging and complaining you are on the slippery slope to separation and divorce. One way or another, it will end in tears.

This highly destructive way to be merely creates bitterness and resentment. It causes stress, low self esteem, anger and aggression.

It is disabling rather than enabling, disempowering rather than empowering, destructive rather than creative. It is in short, the road to nowhere good.

Far better to compliment the things that have been done well, to give encouragement and positivity.

Stop focusing on the things that the other person has done to your dissatisfaction. Instead try to focus on the good things.

And don’t come back at me with “Well if you did things the way I like I wouldn’t be this way.” I am not responsible for your entrenched ways.

If the dishes are clean, who cares how or in what order they were cleaned. Unless your way saves water, time or washing up liquid, who cares? If the dishes are clean, they’re clean, period.

I can’t be you any more than you can be me. Much as I might like to, I cannot read minds. I cannot second guess your every move or thought. I cannot adopt every single little nuance of your way to be no more than you can mine. In short, I am not a magician.

I do the best I can and try to please you because I love you. But if all you can do is complain and criticise I will in the end give up. I will stop doing anything for fear of getting it wrong and having to suffer a severe, hurtful, tongue lashing.

And then you will complain that I don’t do anything. And then I will not want to be with you any more. Can you see where this is heading?

It is not an illicit affair that is the cause of divorce. It is the long constant drip drip, drip of negativity. And what’s worse, it may well be that it is that negativity that drives your partner into the arms of another.

Be positive, complimentary and loving. Above all, be understanding that you are each an individual with your own way of doing things and nobody is to say that one way is right and the other is wrong.

Remember, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Try to think, how can I do this in a better way?

First off try to understand how things work in other spheres of our lives.

A hit record, a successful joke, a box office block buster, they all have one thing in common. They all manage to combine something known and familiar with a new twist added. Successful relationships are the same.

Enjoy what you have in common and rejoice in the differences between you. Negativity and criticism are signs of a closed mind

Closed to the endless possibilities that there are to explore, to learn something new, to become enriched by the addition of a different way to think, a new way to do things, to behave, to be.

Meet your other half, half way. Maybe to change their behaviour first you have to change your own.

And be prepared to learn, it’s not so much what you say as how you say it. It’s how you put it across.

So instead of just complaining “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t like the way you wash the dishes.” try this; “Darling, you’re way of washing the dishes is so cute, But you know what, I have my own way and it is sooooo sexyyyy.” You will find this affectionate, friendly approach so much more effective in getting what you want. It is still criticism, but it’s dressed up in much nicer terms. As the old saying goes, and it applies to all spheres of our lives and personal interactions, “You catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.”

Done in a good way criticism can be highly effective. Get it wrong and the other person will become defensive and resentful. This will lead to bitter and twisted. And this will lead to a complete break down and separation.

It is not always easy to live in confined quarters with another person over long periods of time. However, with an open minded attitude and positivity things can be so much more pleasurable and longer lasting.