HOW TO BE A HAPPY COUPLE: 10 TIPS THAT WORK - GEOGRAFÍA

Having a happy relationship is essential to have a good quality of life and to enjoy life. Spending time together and improving communication are two of the keys, although below we will explain other tips that you can apply.

Is your relationship with a partner stagnant and you feel that you are no longer happy? It may be that you are going through a bad stage or that you have not finished solving some important problems.

Although it seems endless, you can solve this situation and start a stage in which both you and your partner begin to feel better about each other. We all aspire to find love. Find a person with whom to share our life, who makes us happy, who takes care of us and who loves us more than anyone else in the world.

This is sometimes not easy, you run into people who seem like the right thing, but in the end something goes wrong. Until you finally find the one with whom you can imagine a future and a life to share and everything is beautiful and wonderful.

However, once you find it, it is time to face the adventure of keeping love alive and being a happy couple.

All couples argue, have conflicts and go through multiple problems, including monotony, which can wear down their members so much that it ends up affecting the stability of the couple. The key is to resolve them without the relationship deteriorating too much.

Tips for a healthy and happy relationship

1- Have a realistic vision of what a couple is

The first weeks of a relationship, even the first months, until the first year! Everything is beautiful and wonderful, you are in love and you will be forever, or so you think.

But time passes and that tingling, that inexplicable happiness and those nerves about being together diminish and turn into something else, feelings that are not so striking, but are more stable and firm.

Sometimes this change is interpreted as something negative, like that spark has disappeared and love is running out, and then the drama comes.

Myths and beliefs about what a couple is can sometimes do a lot of damage, by focusing on how it should be according to standard parameters, rather than on the characteristics of your own relationship.

Surely you are familiar with some of these most common myths:

The members of the couple should be the best of friends.
The couple should do everything together.
If your partner really loves you, they will know what you think and feel.
Couples must tell each other everything.
If your partner loves you, it is normal for him to feel jealous.
If you feel guilty, confess.
You have to fight at all costs for your relationship.
Having a child fixes the relationship when it goes wrong.
An unhappy partner is better than a broken home.
If your partner wants to leave you, hold on to her and fight.
Opposites attract and complement each other.
Couples should not reveal their problems to strangers.
Be content with what you have.

These types of beliefs are very frequent and tend to generate conflict and suffering in the couple.

A couple is a couple, you are not friends, the feeling and commitment is totally different. Clearly there is complicity and friendship, but something more is necessary. And for proof of this is the well-known friend zone.

In fact, many couples have ceased to be when they realize that they are more friends than anything else. It is important to understand that a couple is made up of three elements: person A, person B, and the union of the two.

Each member is independent and must contribute to maintaining that union, at the moment in which they forget themselves, it will be difficult for the couple, the union, to be healthy and strong.

2- Take care of the relationship

Like most things in life, if you don't take care of them, they break, even the most resistant ones. Well, the same happens with relationships and not just those of a couple.

Some people believe that relationships go well naturally, that once you meet someone you don't have to do anything else. You take it for granted that it will always be there, total, you love each other so much that everything is done.

But maybe you've heard that "sometimes love is not enough" and a relationship is much more than feelings.

They influence the details, the things that are done in common, the individual growth of each one, taking care of the other, of oneself and of the future that you want to build together.

Couples have to evolve, advance, grow and that takes time and dedication. Hug, kiss, caress, hold hands when you walk down the street, and show your love to the world.

3- spend time together

What's the point of any kind of relationship if you don't share time together? Even more so when talking about couples that everything is more intense.

Spending time with someone brings together, but as is said on so many occasions: what is important is not the quantity but the quality of that time. Imagine that you work together, even if you spend many hours with each other, the only thing you will be sharing is work.

It is important that you get to know each other in the different aspects of life and that you share time doing things as couples, without interruptions, without children, without pets…

Theirs is that you do more than watch television together: go on a trip, go out to dinner… All kinds of activities that interest you both.

4- Missing / missing each other

While you have to cultivate your relationship by spending time together, doing things separately also helps to maintain it. Contrary to what popular wisdom has taught us, spending time apart is healthy for the couple.

When you start dating someone, the tendency is to disappear from the group of friends, especially in the first moments. However, it is important to maintain the social circle independently. Just because he wants to go out with his friends alone doesn't mean he loves you less.

Having your own interests and doing activities alone or with other people is beneficial. Thus, you continue to evolve and grow as an individual and have more experiences to share later with your partner.

Equally, it serves to miss the couple. Recognize that when you spend a lot of time with someone you get used to it, you settle in and you end up forgetting how important that person is.

Saving the distances, when you are with your partner all the time, the same thing happens as when you buy something that you like a lot. You use it every day, you take it everywhere, you love to look at it and have it always close, but time goes by and interest diminishes until your attention shifts to something else.

This does not mean that you no longer like that thing, but that you are tired and need new stimuli, new interests. In fact, if you notice when time goes by, you want to use it again.

It is clear that your partner is not an object and that the feelings you have towards her are not the same as those you have for things (or at least they should not be), so that the decrease in interest is not synonymous with lack love does not mean that you have to leave him / her for someone else.

5- Do not try to change your partner

Think about when you met your partner, what did you like the most about her? The thing that made her adorable?

It usually happens that, with the passage of time, what attracted you so much and that made it so special ends up relegated to the background and the things that annoy you become the protagonists. And then you think about why he doesn't stop doing those things, behaves differently and does things the way you like them. In short, why doesn't it change.

This is one of the most common beliefs, especially among women, the topic of the sweet girl who thinks she can change the rebellious boy. What is not counted is that this rarely comes to fruition.

Your partner is not someone you can mold to suit you. You are both independent people, with your strengths and weaknesses. That you like the good things is very easy, accepting the defects is already more complicated and you tend to want to change the other so that they do not have them.

You may be able to reduce the behavior that makes you feel so bad, for example, that you do not leave the toothpaste open. But there will be things that are part of their way of being and if he or she is like that… it's your choice, take it or leave it.

6- Seek the benefit of differences

This point is closely related to the previous one. Once you assume that you cannot change your way of being and accept your partner as she is, you can take one more step and begin to appreciate those things that differentiate you.

Think how boring and monotonous it would be to be with someone identical to you, who always thinks the same as you, wants to do the same things as you… Your coordination is such that you even want to go to the bathroom at the same time.

The fact that you have differences is what brings balance to the relationship. It is always necessary to have other points of view from which to see life.

7- Know how to communicate

The main problem that most couples have is that they cannot communicate. With how easy it seems!

Various variables intervene in communication beyond the message we want to convey. For example, the words used, the gestures, the tone of voice, the moment in which it is said…

The confluence of all these elements can lead to great discussions as a couple, even when the message was with all the good intentions in the world.

Another popular belief that affects communication is that your partner should always know what you think and feel, even without telling them.

It would be quite nice if when you start dating someone, both of you acquire the superpower of telepathy. However, I regret to say that this does not happen and if you do not explain what is happening to you, your partner will never find out.

It is true that there are people who are more observant and perceptive, capable of knowing what is happening to you just by looking at you. Normally that person is your mother and some other good friend, it does not necessarily have to be your partner.

So, to achieve good communication with your partner in which there are hardly any misunderstandings, you can do two basic things:

Speak: clearly express what worries you, bothers you, thinks and feels. Without waiting for the other to understand something beyond what you have expressed and, if possible, without offending or belittling the other.
Listen: pay attention to what your partner is telling you, not what you think they are saying. If you have any doubts, ask after they have finished speaking and try to understand their point of view.

8- be honest

An important part for happiness and stability in couple relationships is sincerity and honesty, because when mistrust is installed in the couple, it can lead to a multitude of problems.

Although with this issue you have to be careful, because being honest does not mean having the obligation to share everything with your partner.

Honesty and sincerity means expressing to your partner what you think and feel about something, even if they are things that you know he or she does not want to hear. But beware, that does not imply plunging her / him into misery by telling her all the things she does wrong, we are talking about things that the other person really needs to know.

Your partner ends up being one of the people you trust the most, among other things because you think they are looking for your good and happiness, so if they see that there is something that is going to harm you, they should tell you.

9- Respect each other

If there is an important point on this list, it is surely this. Respect. Once respect for the other is lost, the relationship tends to go downhill and it is difficult to stabilize it again.

Mutual respect is something that is worked on daily, being aware of the things that each one does for the other, valuing and thanking them.

But you have to be careful especially at the time of differences, when arguments come, because that is when it is easier to lose sight of respect and resort to insult and degradation in order to win the battle.

And in the end no one is winning anything, on the contrary, you hurt the person you love and you move further away. Because, although it is known that they are said in a moment of rage and anger, the words still hurt and sometimes it is not easy to forget that damage.

10- Have a common project

Last but not least. If there is something that characterizes a couple, it is having a project in common, be it coexistence, having pets, children…

In the case of happy couples, this project is usually the same for both of you. The problem comes when one wants one thing and the other another, or when both want the same thing, but at different times.

Here the couple's communication skills intervene to a great extent, to avoid misunderstandings, confusion and unnecessary discussions. It is natural that even if it is clear that the same project for the future is shared, it is not synchronized in when to carry it out.

I once again emphasize that, in a couple, each person is independent and has their own rhythm. It is a matter of agreeing and waiting for the time for both of you.

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References

Baldwin, MW (1995). Relational schemas and cognition in close relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12, 547-552.
Brennan, KA, and Shaver, PR (1995). Dimensions of adult attachment, affect regulation, and romentic relationship functioning. Personality and Social Psychology, 21 (3), 267-283.
Cupach, WR and Comstock, J. (1990). Satisfaction with sexual communication in marriage: links to sexual satisfaction and dyadic adjustment. Journal of Social and Personal Relationsips, 7 (2), 179-186.
Hazan, C. and Shaver, PR (1987). Romantic love conceptialized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and social Psychology, 52, 511-524.

HOW TO BE A HAPPY COUPLE: 10 TIPS THAT WORK - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025