What makes for a good, healthy, viable, satisfying, loving relationship? Isn't this something we just know how to do?
To answer the second question first, "no". It might surprise you to know how little we actually "just know" about conducting good intimate relationships. Here are some of the mistakes people almost routinely make in their intimate relationships:
1) acting as if it is a sporting event, where there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser
2) insisting on being "right"
3) trying to tell your partner what they "have to" do in order to be acceptable
4) trying to control your partner's thinking or behavior
5) a lack of cooperative support toward a win-win dynamic
6) a failure to actually listen to your partner, and respect their differences and needs
7) making disagreements into a battle where conquest, rather than negotiation is the goal
8) dragging up issues from years ago when conflict arises
These are some of the obstacles to good relationship. So, to answer the first question above, the opposite of these things will make for good, healthy intimate relations:
1) learning to think about your relationship as a joint venture, rather than as a clash between enemies
2) learning to understand the necessity for flexibility, for give and take, for putting the relationship above your own need to be "right"
3) learning how to negotiate, rather than conquer
4) giving up the need to control, in favor of the rewards of real connection
5) understanding the benefits of compromise so that both parties come out winners
6) learning how to listen, to hear, and to pause long enough to take in and genuinely consider your partner's point of view, even if you don't agree
7) turning conflicts into opportunities to strengthen your relationship bond, rather than using them to prove how strong, or smart, or clever or important, or manipulative you are
8) learning how to work with feelings in the moment, instead of storing up grievances to be used as ammunition later on.
It's often hard work, but the rewards, if true intimacy and connection and loving are your goals, are worth it.
