Being in a healthy relationship is good for us. If we are communicating well with our partner, feel respected, listened to and cared for, then we instinctively feel everything is great in our world. When it stops working our happiness and health are both badly affected.

Here are a few suggestions and ideas to help you and your relationship over the coming year.

1. Understand that no relationship is “perfect”. It is unrealistic to expect that your relationship will work well all the time. It’s normal to react to the pressures and strains of family life. Sometimes the way you express your feelings to your partner can make things worse.
2. Talk with each other. Not many of us reach the end of our life and say that our biggest regret was that we didn’t watch more TV! Switch the TV off and spend some quality time together.
3. Take care of yourselves online, remember most things online are stored and are searchable. It might seem like a good idea to rant about your relationship in the heat of the moment, but this could come back to haunt you in a myriad of different ways 1 year or even 3 years down the line. If either of you use social networking sites regularly Facebook-proof your relationship.
4. If you are looking around for relationship help, accept that all advice is not created equal. Your relationship is precious, be selective. If you are looking online, ask yourself, “What do I know about this person?” Are they up-front about who they are and what they do? Do they provide any verifiable evidence that they know what they are talking about. Does what they say make sense to you? Does it fit with your own values and beliefs?
5. Friends and family may also want to give advice, and they can be supportive and helpful. However sometimes people have their own agenda at heart not yours, or sometimes the advice is very well intentioned but the person giving it doesn’t have much of a clue about relationships.
6. Get professional help when you need it, don’t put it off in the hope that things will get better on their own. Hope is a good thing but it won’t work as a strategy on it’s own in saving your relationship.
7. When life throws lemons at you, learn to make lemonade. Don’t see getting outside help as a sign of weakness or that your relationship is failing. The problems you are experiencing right now are a wake-up call. This is your opportunity to do something different and start over – to choose, to make changes, TO REBUILD.

In keeping with the Brand New Year-Brand New You theme which is traditional at the beginning of the year, I’ve re-vamped and updated Andrea Sheehy Couples Counselling web site for 2012.

Although in many ways exciting and fun, the changes have also been challenging, time consuming and at times frustrating.

It might have been easier to leave the site as it was, not to bother or to walk away from it.

However I realise that to keep up with what is happening in the here and now, however uncomfortable, change is essential. So I stayed with it, and I’ve learnt lots!

This is true too of our relationships. It can often seem the more comfortable, the less risky or the least painful option is to not try or to walk away, but we lose so much when we choose this option. We deprive ourselves of the opportunity of learning and growth. This means we stay stuck, caught in the same old patterns, or we walk away and carry all the old patterns into a new relationship.

To update the way we think, feel or behave is challenging, It means stepping out of our comfort zone from time to time, it is also essential if we want a thriving, healthy and fulfilling relationship.

When most people think of relationship breakdown they often imagine noisy arguments and fights but this is not always the case. Sometimes couples breakup because they forget to see the good in or value each other enough.

In his book The Games People Play, Eric Berne argues that people are “stroke hungry” – what he means by this is that as humans we need acknowledgement and recognition from others in order to have satisfying and meaningful lives. In each of us there lies a basic human desire or “hunger” to have our relational needs met. One of the most important needs is a desire that others see the good in us, our positive characteristics.

As human beings it often seems easier to remember and hold on to the things we don’t like about our relationships rather than the things we do. Out of our awareness we can become almost fixated on the negative aspects of our partner (or on those parts of our relationship that don’t work) rather than acknowledge the things we do like about each other (or the bits of our relationships that work really well). We often fail to understand the impact each of us has on the other. We often give “negative strokes” without even thinking about it. We can inadvertently put someone down, offer “constructive” criticism, or simply not respond at all.

We worry about being rejected (or if we will be perceived as “weak”) if we compliment or even notice something we like about our partner.

Yet a few genuine kind comments, words of encouragement or even just a smile are true gifts that can’t be bought or sold.
They can go a long way to creating a loving, happy, healthy relationship.

My relationship counselling practice is for any couple: straight or gay, married, living together or dating. I offer marital and couple therapy in Hinckley. To book an appointment, call Andrea: 01455 612 167.

What do you do to nourish your relationship?

Recently I was chatting to a friend who had cut his working hours. Yes, he had a big mortgage to pay, but, tipping the balance, he had decided that there were also many positives. He got to see his son each day rather than work the 60 hour week he used to, he was stress free, he felt happier and he got to spend much more time with his wife.

Now, while I’m not suggesting that if everyone cut their working hours life would be rosy, it did occur to me that very often we can get overtaken by the day to day routines of life. We work, do household tasks, look after children or parents depending on our stage of life, catch up with friends and pursue hobbies and interests. Tasks are a necessity of life and our pastimes can act as a pleasurable and enduring source of contentment, but do you do them to the extent that you neglect your relationship?

If your answer to this is a big fat “No” then that’s fantastic, but it seems to me that relationship neglect is an extremely common problem for couples.

So what do I mean by relationship neglect?

Do you remember when you first got together and everything seemed right with the world? Glowing with excitement, you couldn’t wait to rush home from work to spend time with your partner. Yes, you might have met up with family and friends but what you really enjoyed were those magical hours the two of you spent together. You really valued the special connection the two of you had.

You’re not entirely sure how it happened, but a few years later maybe you’re still spending time together but not actually connecting. For example you find yourselves watching TV all night and not talking, you seem to spend a lot of time talking about managing family commitments or work but not saying what you really want or need in your relationship.

You know you got what you needed from your partner at the beginning of the relationship and you know you are not getting it now, so what happened? Why did it all go flat?

The reasons can be complex but our early “loved up” feelings are partly because our bodies release a hormone called Oxytocin; this can help at an unconscious level in the early stages of a relationship by creating calmness and increasing empathy. The supply of this hormone eventually tails off, but fortunately there is a lot you can do to consciously create a nourishing and satisfying relationship.

Here are five tips to nurture your relationship and put the magic back.

• Black-out: Pretend you have had a power failure; the TV isn’t working, the phones wont work there is no music or lights, just you, your partner, candles and conversations.
  You could try some Applied Mindfulness – this is all about deepening your engagement, really focussing on what you are doing, in other words “being in the moment”. Notice how your partner is breathing, their body language, and copy small involuntary movements. Share what you are noticing about each other in the here and now.
• Leave little notes for each other: I don’t mean ones that say “Remember the dustman’s coming tomorrow”. Think personal.
• Start dating again: It might sound silly, but give yourself permission to go on a “date”. Be creative: it doesn’t need to be expensive, remember dates when you were young?
  For example if you have fond memories of sitting in the local park sharing a bag of chips recreate it now. The idea is to have fun!
• Notice things you like about each other: Most of us can list quite a few things we don’t like about our partners but it is sometimes difficult to remember or articulate the things we do like.
  Agree to spend half an hour talking about what attracted you to each other, what you love about each other now and what your partner does that you wish you could do as well. Remember this is not about a plan of action, changing or offering to do things, it’s about noticing the positives in each other.
• Romantic break: Sometimes being in a different environment with no distractions can be really inspiring. If you can, arrange a weekend away, just the two of you. Ban all work related conversations and agree to switch off the mobiles!

I’m not suggesting that you use these ideas to come up with a plan of action, but, if you do decide to do things differently, make sure you agree a course of actions together. Don’t just try things out without letting your partner in on it, they will have their own ideas and contributions.

A healthy relationship has a balance of work, family and quality couple-time.

Don’t simply go through the motions of being in a relationship, nurture your relationship and enjoy it.