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A beautiful garden filled with roses, daisies, tulips and other colorful flowers can enhance one’s home and bring joy and beauty to one’s life. But, such a garden requires sun, water, weeding, and lots and lots of care and maintenance.
Likewise, a loving, vibrant, and supportive relationship with a spouse or partner can transform a home into a haven of happiness, beauty, and intimacy. And, just like a flower garden requires maintenance, a strong and lasting relationship also requires mutual focus on building and strengthening the pillars that the relationship is built on, according to mindbodygreen. These seven pillars form the foundation for secure, loving, and lasting relationships.
Pillar one: be the best you
Licensed professional counselor, Rachel Glik wrote in mindbodygreen: "Our own inner happiness affects relationship happiness…Connecting to our own wholeness is the foundation for building any relationship with someone else.”
Glik adds that when she starts counseling couples, one of the first questions on her intake form is, “How fulfilled are you with yourself and your life, separate from your relationship?”
Strong relationships with others are built on the bedrock of a strong relationship with yourself. Without self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-love, self-care, and self-development, it will be difficult to project knowledge and intimacy, love, care, and growth towards and with another. Therefore, an important pillar of relationships is building a relationship with oneself first.
Glik advises, if your relationship is on the rocks, you should first turn inward. ”Investing first in yourself pays off — you are worth the investment,” she wrote.
Pillar two: be a good communicator and a good listener
Communication is a key pillar of relationships, according to Times Now News. This includes both making oneself vulnerable, opening up to a partner, and feeling comfortable expressing oneself, and also listening activity with empathy and compassion. Strong communication can help both people in the relationship feel loved, comfortable, and valued, and provides a framework for working out any issues that arise.
Pillar three: challenges can be an opportunity for growth
Challenges — waves in the sea — are opportunities to learn, change, and grow, according to mindbodygreen. Glik wrote in mindbodygreen:, “Your friction is a good sign; you’re being called to grow.”
She suggests that partners can engage in healing conversations using mirroring, validation, and empathy, to help each conquer challenges and to leverage bumps in the relationships as opportunities to grow stronger together.
Pillar four: trust and intimacy
Times Now News explained that trusting a spouse or partner isn’t automatic. It’s something that needs to be cultivated and built. However, a relationship cannot survive without this trust, where both sides know that their other half is looking out for them and their interests.
Another side effect of trust is intimacy, both physical and emotional, where partners feel comfortable being vulnerable and affectionate with each other.
Pillar five: Prioritize your partner
Glik writes in mindbodygreen that she often asks struggling couples to rank how they prioritize their kids, their marriage, and themselves. Many will list their priorities as kids first, relationship second, and themselves last.
She advises that in a healthy relationship, it should be the opposite. Focusing on self-actualization and self-growth first clears the way for a better relationship with your spouse. Afterwards, prioritizing building such a relationship, one that is stable and filled with joy, creates a more secure home to raise children in.
Gilk adds that a person must make their relationship with their partner a priority, appreciate them, and not take them for granted.
Pillar six: respect and commitment
In a relationship, respect means showing regard for your partner’s boundaries, space, autonomy, and points of view, according to Times Now News. Partners that are respectful and committed treat each other with kindness and are willing to invest in working through challenges together.
Pillar seven: create a shared purpose
mindbodygreen suggests that a growth-orientated, model relationship transcends the needs of both partners by focusing on a goal greater than themselves. This can be creating home, raising a family, or helping them world and humanity at large by focusing on shared values and skills. A shared goal can cement a relationship and help two people fulfill themselves as a couple.
By embracing personal growth, shared values, effective and empathetic communication, resilience, trust, intimacy, and respect, couples can build an enduring and vibrant partnership. They can transform their relationship into a haven of lasting love and happiness.
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