4 Little Things The Happiest Couples Do Separately
You DON'T have to do everything together to be happy.
filadendron,Rido | Canva As a couple, you and your partner both strive to create a satisfying and healthy relationship that lasts. But, sometimes, despite how much you try, you're unable to create healthy relationships that are mutually supportive and fulfilling. One of the signs of a healthy relationship is when you and your partner both manage to bring your best self into the relationship. And, once you both learn how, in turn, you bring about the positive changes you seek.
Here are 4 things people in the healthiest relationships do separately to stay happy:
1. They get to know themselves really well.
To be your best self in your personal relationships, you need to develop your awareness of yourself. What do you value? What do you dream of? What are your strengths? What are the skills you want to hone? When we ask ourselves these kinds of questions, we grow our awareness of ourselves and we can use that awareness to create healthy relationships that are beneficial for everyone involved. Sometimes, our personal relationships hit a rough patch. When this happens, your awareness will clue you into how you might be contributing to the difficulty at hand and whether or not that relationship should be maintained.
2. They learn to love themselves for the people they are independently.
Learning how to love yourself is such an important step towards creating healthy relationships. It's cliché but true — to really love someone else, you have to love yourself first. Somehow, we're unable to treat someone better than we treat ourselves. Our limits in loving others come from our inability to love ourselves. Over the course of our relationships, these limits inevitably come to light. We may compensate for our inability by giving more to others than we have — or have allowed ourselves — to receive. Yet, this can set us up for difficulty. If we're not loving ourselves, then we're likely looking for someone else to give us that sense of being loved.
This can be the starting point for lots of problems like dependency, fear of abandonment, and fear of intimacy. Couples who love themselves as much as they love each other see the unique value and intrinsic beauty of who they are without any externally imposed definitions. So to begin doing this, take the time to tell yourself all the things that you like about yourself. And do it often.
3. They don't let the past creep into the present.
Part of showing up as our best selves is to be in the present moment as much as possible. This means that our previous experiences need to be left where they belong — in the past. To do this, people typically undergo a process wherein they remember the past, understand how it affected them, and then disentangle themselves from it. There are a number of different tools that people can use to clear themselves of aspects of their past that no longer serve them.
If want to create a different baseline for yourself, it's helpful to find a method that you can use to continually reinforce your new way of being. To clear your history, try a few methods that you sense would be a good fit. Then keep an open mind while you see if they're effective for you. It takes a little while to clear your past from your present, so give this process some time. As you do this, your awareness will increase and old feelings might come to the surface. When you're in a relationship, it's sometimes helpful to let the other person know when something from your past has been activated and communicate what you need when this happens.
4. They own their decisions.
Nothing makes a relationship stronger than integrity. The biggest gift you can give yourself is to know and own your contributions to your relationships — both in the positive and in the negative. When things get difficult in a relationship, look for the ways that you've contributed to the problem. Simply ask yourself, "Is there anything that I would have done better or differently if I had remained in full integrity?"
If the answer is "yes," then do your best to make a right on what you know you could have done better. When we're unclear about how our own issues influence our relationships, we're likely to do unintentional damage. When we're unconscious of our unresolved feelings about our past, we're more likely to blame, shame, and guilt others when those unresolved feelings are triggered. It's only when we're aware of our contributions to the state of our relationships and able to stay in our integrity that we can create environments in which our relationships can thrive.
Dr. Kate Siner is a teacher, mentor, spiritual guide, and author who has appeared on NBC, ABC, Fox, and other major network affiliates to talk about spiritual and personal development. She’s spoken on WPRO, MX Talk of the Town, Consciousness Network, and TalkStream Radio.