This week’s column, I confess, is slightly pointless
because I am going to make suggestions on how to improve your relationship with
your partner. It is not slightly pointless because the advice is bad. It is
because knowing what to do and doing it are very different things. If I were to
list the greatest asset any couple could have, it would be the ability to
change. And if I were to list the rarest attribute that marriages – or people –
possess, it would be exactly the same thing.
However, as a cheery optimist, I am
going to go ahead anyway.Some of the advice is screamingly obvious, but that
doesn’t make it invalid – in fact, it is the obvious things to which we most
frequently tend to give insufficient attention.
1. Find something you both like doing and
do it together. As we become increasingly atomised
within the family unit, through a combination of technology and lack of time,
the experience of a one-to-one, face-to-face relationship is increasingly
rare. Either we are too busy or we would rather do something by ourselves. In
the past, the family was forced together by necessity – shared chores, shared
space, shared leisure activities. To make a positive choice to spend time with
one another not only helps to build a partnership – it makes a statement. It
asserts that you are not just there to be functional, chore performers,
money-making machines, childcarers. You are human beings above and beyond your
roles.
2. Watch more TV. Computers isolate, but watching TV
together bonds. Just tune into Gogglebox to see what a positive experience
it can be. It almost never happens in our house any more – because now family
members are free to make individual choices about their entertainment. And as
is so often the case in politics, what is individually rational is collectively
destructive.
3. Don’t interrupt. Interrupting someone before they have
finished saying what they want to say is the strategy of choice for those who
do not have sufficient belief in their own viewpoint to allow it to be
challenged. This is true in many arenas of human activity, but never more so
than in relationships. Let your partner have their say, even if they don’t do
the same for you and what they say is provocative and inaccurate. Somebody has
to set an example.
4. Try to make an effort to look nice
occasionally. Yes, it’s good to throw off the mask you
have to wear outside the home and relax. It’s also good to let your partner
know you care enough about them not to become a slob with a personal hygiene
problem, just because you can get away with it.
5. Abandon your project to turn your
partner into a different person. It isn’t going to work. If you want them
to change, understand that you can’t change a personality, only behaviours. But
it is a slow process that can only happen in small steps. Be practical. People
can change the way they act (not who they are), but it requires a lot of
patience and commitment.
6. Notice. I am very bad at this. Spotting the
signals that my partner sends out without her voicing them defeats me time and
again. So by the time she does give voice, she is already irritated with me for
being so obtuse. This does not mean you have to be psychic – only that you are
thinking about the other person and trying to understand their needs.
7. The children are incredibly
important. But so is your relationship.
8. Don’t say “you always” or “you
never”. It’s never true, always.
9. Use recreational drugs as and when
necessary. Booze, dope, prescription painkillers,
Viagra. It may not enrich a relationship, but it does help to anaesthetise
you against some of its most painful side-effects.
10. Be kind. The simplest, hardest and most effective
strategy of all.
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