How to Keep Your Romantic Relationship Alive Recap
Facilitator: Turunesh Teferra, Operations Manager at ICS
The session began with Tirunesh asking members: How do you describe a romantic relationship? To which some answered, It’s dedicating time to each other. speaking each other’s love language, understanding that you can’t solve someone else’s problem (you can only give ideas). They all agreed that it takes a long time to be in a healthy relationship and that couples need to work through their differences, expectations, and communication styles over a period of time. A relationship is ongoing. Tirunesh shared a wonderful analogy: Life is a laboratory of learning how to live.
A relationship can’t be kept standing by one person. It needs both people working on it. A healthy relationship includes honesty, trust, respect, boundaries, open communication, and anger control. Tirunesh added that your background matters: how you were raised, the kind of family you come from. We have to work on ourselves. Know our weaknesses. We must also be conscious of your words –you don’t need to be judgmental or harsh.
When it comes to disagreements. You first need to know what all the issues are. Figure out what both of you want. Trust is essential. You won’t always agree and that’s very normal. Remember to have mutual understanding and respect. You need to know what you can control and can’t control in a relationship. You can control your thoughts and words and actions but you can’t control your partners behaviors or thoughts. You need to accept your partner for who they are.
Major takeaways:
- Gentleness and forgiveness
- Always look to a solution
- Share your thoughts
- So nice things for your partner
- Tell them you care and appreciate them
- Come up with new things to try together
- Marriage is work daily and consistency