How to maintain and work towards a healthy relationship


          Marc is always insisting I find new ways to learn new things, and for a while he even had me watching Ted Talks pertaining to my major or just things in general that I found interesting. When I was doing that, he'd ask me for a little summary on what I heard and my feelings about it if any. So I found a Ted Talk on how to maintain or work towards a healthy relationship. No relationship is perfect, including mine and Marc's relationship, so I figured I'd look into the research being done on this topic. Since these blogs are usually a summary or something I figured I'd let you guys see what I learned.
          If there's one thing we all want, it's a healthy relationship. Ones where you have intimacy, security, respect, good communication, and a sense of being valued. According to the speaker and her research, these are the things a relationship needs to be healthy. If instead you find yourself arguing all the time, hostility lurks around your relationship, don't feel comfortable going to your partner for support and feel stuck in endless bad patterns, you probably need to start working on things asap. So she and her colleagues came up with a skill set they termed "romantic competence", it would increase the good behaviors and decrease the bad ones. The three skills that make up romantic competence are insight, mutuality, and emotional regulation. 

1. Insight: it allows you to be aware of oneself and understand who you are as a person. We're quick to put the blame on our partners and don't always think about what we're doing. With insight, we are able to learn from our mistakes.
2. Mutuality: it allows you to know that both you and your partner have needs, and both of your needs matter. Not only do they both matter, but it is important that you are willing to meet your partners needs and to support them.
3. Emotional regulation: it allows you to give yourself a second to put things into perspective. You don't want to freak out about something when you know there is a solution. There will always be a solution. With regulating your emotions you will find a tolerance being built instead of acting irrationally.
          
          Those three things hit it on the head for me. The more she spoke, the more I could point out when I didn't think about my end of an issue and put all the blame on Marc. I could see how I was so focused on meeting my own needs before even thinking about his. And finally, I could see when I'm overreacting and need to take a chill pill to see things will work out some how some way. Those three things aren't always going to be easy to think about because when you're upset, you don't want to think about research, you just want to be upset. I get it, I'm saying I'll do it all the time now, but I know it won't be easy. If I'm able to do it at least 50% of the time, then we're making progress. And when we're making progress, we're one step closer to a healthier realtionship. Who knows, after thinking and doing it so much, you and I both might end up with some pretty positive built in skills! Now the true task is, when do we start?

With love always,
Becca Colón

P.s. If you want to watch the Ted Talk, I've linked it down below! Happy healthy relationship-ing!

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