lifestyle

Give Your Relationship A Love MOT

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

This Valentines in addition to the traditional flowers and romantic meal, why don’t you give your relationship an MOT to indicate where you can improve it for long term love? With this relationship MOT you can give your loved one the gift of long-term loving.

So, what makes a relationship roadworthy?

1. Emotional tone – this is a key contributor to staying the distance. Certainly, conflict is a part of life but in our love relations we want in general the emotional background noise to be about kindness and love. Oxytocin is a hormone produced when we are safe in our relationship to another. It produces a sense of wellbeing, a feeling of being bonded and contributes to our health. It’s produced when we look into another’s eyes, when we touch skin to skin in a non-sexual way and when we hug etc. Looking at and touching each other, cuddling on the sofa, holding hands are all activity which promote bonding creating a loving tone to our relationship. Dropping the tone of our voices also produces wellbeing and affection. Think of how you talk to a child to soothe them, it works on us adults as well.

2. Conflict skills - as well as promoting bonding having good conflict resolution skills keeps our relationships on track. These skills exist along a spectrum from learning to let things go, to getting it all out in the open. Being able to verbalise feeling angry rather than being angry in an aggressive manner for example is so much healthier for us. Owning our part in a problem. Creating emotional distance from conflict issues to problem solves helps. Learning that stress from life impacts us but doesn’t indicate our relationship is poor is good also. Learning assertive communication skills will improve conflict management.

3. Owning and having flexible role boundaries - this allows us to be more authentic and open. We all play different roles in life and in our love relationships it’s vital the roles we take on feel authentic and allow us freedom to express ourselves. It’s okay that one of you is better at the finances than another for example. It’s okay to divide labour in that way, but it’s not okay to force one person to take it on because it’s a societal norm for example. Find out what works for your relationship. Discuss what you want in all aspects of the relationship.

These three areas are well researched to contribute to making a relationship roadworthy and are all things that can be worked on to function better.

Healthy Love

The keys to a healthy and successful relationship are well known and they fall into three areas of functioning, it comes from the global assessment of relational functioning (GARF)

Problem solving: not just dealing with conflict when it arises but also how effective one is at letting go of conflict that is not helpful.
Ask yourselves - Is the ’structure’ of the relationship clear? Are boundaries understood? Are tasks allocated fairly? Is power shared appropriately? Are roles adopted with personal autonomy?
Is the emotional climate and feelings towards each other generally in the arena of love and positive regard, are positive views held by members about being in the relationships? Is sexual functioning healthy and positive?

Dealing with Life’s Challenges Together

Photo by Sven Mieke on Unsplash

It’s important in any intimate relationship to understand stressors from outside that cause issues but don’t necessarily mean the relationship is bad. Learning to distinguish between if you like this inside and outside of the relationship in terms of problems is very helpful in maintaining healthy love towards each other. It’s about normalising stress responses to stressful life experiences rather than saying they are signs of danger or problems.

External circumstances can challenge the perception that our current love relationships are not meeting needs effectively in this area and this can cause a sense of internal stress. It’s perfectly normal, it doesn’t mean that the love relationship is bad, it means the circumstance it exists in are bad.

Mental health expert Noel McDermott comments:
“Life can and does hurt us and that’s an important thing to accept. Relationships that have managed to make this boundary distinction between outside and inside, learned to accept and forgive the vulnerable humanity in each other, that have realistic expectations of what is possible during tough times, that have fundamentally maintained a 'background noise’ of love and tolerance for each other will survive and grow. That’s not a promise that your relationship will last ’till death us do part’, but a promise that you’ll deal with life's challenges much better together and if you do part, you’ll deal with that better as well.”

Mental health expert Noel McDermott is a psychotherapist and dramatherapist with over 30 years’ work within the health, social care, education, and criminal justice fields. His company Mental Health Works provides unique mental health services for the public and other organisations. Mental Health Works offers in situ health care and will source, identify and co-ordinate personalised teams to meet your needs – https://www.mentalhealthworks.net/