Relationships are systems that work very much like our health. What we put in, we get out.

If we eat well and exercise regularly, sleep well, drink lots of water, and use alcohol moderately, generally our bodies are healthy. Nourished. Happy. And life becomes more wonderful for us as we feel well most of the time.

If we don’t do this, our health is often the first thing to suffer. The thing that so many of us take for granted. Do you?

The point is this: To get and stay healthy takes effort, discipline, and a rigorous commitment to making sure we do everything we can to stay well. Most things we do is to achieve this goal. 

Relationships are the same. If we work at our relationships, constantly working at them to keep communication flowing, supporting each other and ‘being there’ in the tough and good times – generally our relationships flourish.

When we take each other for granted

You’re busy with work, trying to get ahead. You’re stressed and unhappy at work, you feel your career is going nowhere and that nobody listens to you. You complain that ‘nothing in my life works’ and it may feel that way.

And whilst our attention is elsewhere, our relationship system is under-nourished, taken for granted, and even… neglected.

Like your health, if we neglect the needs of our relationship and put it in the back seat of our lives, you will get the result that comes from this. A back-seat attempt at a loving relationship

As a relationship struggles, intimacy is compromised (some of you may say ‘what intimacy?) communication is sporadic (at best) and both of you struggle to keep what we used to have in the relationship we have today.

Take your focus of the ‘relationship road’ and you may end up off the beaten track wondering what happened or struggling to get back to what used to feel so special.

According to loveisrespect, there are 4 things that grow a healthy relationship:

• Respect;
• Equality
• Safety
• Trust

Think about your relationship right now. How many of these does it have?

Keep ‘feeling the love’

• Check in with each other. Happy couples reach out to each other when they're apart and together. Make a special time for just you and your partner every day, even if it’s only 30 minutes.

• Focus on your marriage. Keep it in the front seat of your life.

• Act generously instead of keeping score. In a healthy relationship, you're on the same team and neither of you counts who does what. We do it all together 

• Show random acts of kindness to each other, lovingly letting your partner know how special they are to you.

• Give each other compliments - tell each other how good they look, how much you appreciate what they do for you and the family and so forth.

• Keep the intimacy in the relationship, focussing on it’s specialness and let your partner know how you feel about them.

• Keep talking, always. Communication is the life-blood or your relationship and without it, neither of you are going anywhere in a hurry

• Keep up the habit of saying “thank you” and “I love you”- and mean both!

• Take time out for yourselves and the relationship – a weekend away, a show together, a romantic dinner (not only on Valentine’s Day) and keep working at the ‘specialness’ in your relationship.

• Listen to each other. That means you don’t talk. Try and listen to their perspective and what they are feeling. What does their internal world look like? Chances are if you don’t know, you’re not listening.

• Have fun. Enjoy your relationship. Keep doing the fun things you used to do at the start of your relationship. Fun times are good times.